Lord of the Far Island, Victoria Holt [world of reading TXT] 📗

window for some time looking out on the gardens and thinking that this time next week I should be married. Philip and I would be on our way to Venice.

I rose as usual without an inkling of what might have happened. Then Rollo rode over in the midmorning.

Rose, her face the color of chalk, came into my bedroom, where I was sorting out my clothes. Bessie was with her, peering from behind her back.

"What's wrong?" I said.

"There's been some accident. I don't know rightly what, but Mr. Rollo Carrington's here and he's asking to see you."

I went down to the drawing room. Rollo was standing by the fireplace.

"Is anything wrong?" I cried.

I saw his face then—pale, drawn and anxious. He didn't look like the Rollo I had known.

"Something terrible has happened," he said. "You must try to be calm."

"It's Philip," I said.

"Yes," he nodded. "Philip."

"He's ill. . . ."

"He's dead."

"Philip. . .dead! Oh no, that can't be. How could it. . . ?"

"Philip was found dead this morning."

"But he wasn't ill."

"He was found shot."

"Shot! But who . . . ?"

Rollo shook his head slowly and sadly.

"It appears the wound was self-inflicted," said Rollo.

I felt myself growing dizzy. Rollo caught me and held me for some moments until I regained my strength.

"There's a mistake," I said shrilly. "I don't believe it."

"No, alas. There is no mistake."

Everything was collapsing about me. It was like a bad dream. I'd wake up. I must. The world had become a strange place full of distorted nightmares. And the greatest of these was that with Rollo standing before me saying in a low tragic voice: "Philip is dead. He took his own life."

What did it mean?

Dead Man's Leap

I lay on my bed. I did not want to move. I couldn't believe it. Philip dead! Philip who had been so full of life! It was impossible. And to take his own life. He, who had been so happy! Only the day before he had talked exuberantly of our future. What could have happened so suddenly to make him do such a thing?

Esmeralda came and sat by my bed. I wanted no one but I could just bear her. She was so quiet. She took a handkerchief soaked with eau de cologne and laid it on my forehead. I knew I should never smell that scent again without remembering this day.

I kept seeing Philip in scenes from the past. The day we set the fields on fire—that mischief in his eyes! He had wanted to let it blaze for a while before we gave the alarm. How his eyes had shone! How they had danced! We'd be punished for this but let us enjoy it while it lasted. Philip at the dance, proposing to me, serious suddenly, assuring me that he would always look after me.

And now he had done this.

"I don't believe it," I said. "It's not true. It can't be."

Esmeralda said nothing. What was there to say?

A great deal would be said of course and they would soon start saying it.

That very day it was there in the newspaper, the great headlines: "Suicide of Bridegroom-to-Be. Six days before he was to have married Miss Ellen Kellaway, Philip, son of Josiah Carrington, took his own life. What is the story behind the tragedy?"

Everyone believed that there was a story and that I was the one who held the vital clue.

Why should a young man who had every blessing shoot himself a few days before his wedding? It could only be that life had become too much for him to endure, so he had taken this way out. That he was to have been married in six days' time was the theme of the story.

I lay in my room, the Venetian blinds drawn to keep out the sun. The sun that could not warm the coldness that invaded me. I could not eat; I could not sleep. I could only lie on my bed in shocked stillness and ask myself: Why? Why?

Esmeralda told me what had happened. I commanded her to and in the same way that she had obeyed my orders when she was young she did now: "He was shot with one of the guns from Trentham Towers. He must have brought it from there."

"It's not possible. That would mean that he had planned it."

She was silent and my mind went back to that occasion when I had been with him in the gun room at Trentham Towers. I remembered the satin-lined case and the silver-gray pistol which he had taken out and touched so lovingly. There had been an empty compartment in the case and he had talked, jokingly I had thought, about keeping a pistol under his pillow. What could he have meant? Was it really true that he had done this? Had he then been serious when he had talked of burglars? Even so, what could have possessed him to turn the pistol on himself? Was it possible that I, who had thought I knew him so well, had been mistaken? Was there a darker side to his nature which he had never allowed me to see? I could not believe it.

"He couldn't have killed himself!" I cried out. "He was talking to me only the day before. Imagine, Esmeralda, the despair a man must be in to take his own life! Can you imagine Philip ever in despair? I never saw him so. Did you? He wasn't the sort of man who could hide his feelings. He never attempted to. I knew Philip. Nobody knew him better, and I say it's impossible. I shall never believe it."

But it had happened.

Esmeralda said: "The newspaper people have been here. They want to see you. There'll be an inquest. You'll have to go."

I roused myself. "I want to go," I said. "I want to discover the reason for this."

It was like a dream. I saw their faces . . . Mr. Josiah Carrington looking unlike himself; his face pale and distorted with grief, Lady Emily