May 16, 2025 • 18 mins
Dive into the mysterious world of the Domino Club, where a case of opium poisoning is anything but simple. Following the murder of Dr. Weathered, our protagonist is plunged into a twisted game with stakes running high - a stolen case book that threatens the entirety of London society. Guided by Zenobia Salome, the Leopardess, and a poison unknown even to renowned expert Sir Frank Tarleton, the narrative unfolds through the eyes of an unwilling participant in this deadly charade. Unravel the mystery as we delve into the darkest corners of the human heart, exposing the dreadful lengths one might go to protect their secrets. This gripping detective story, with its unique psychoanalytical perspective, will keep you on the edge of your seat, challenging even the most seasoned mystery enthusiasts.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Chapter twelve of the Club of Masks. This is LibriVox recording.
All LibriVox recordings were in the public domain. From more
information at ald here, please visit librox dot org. The
Club of Masks By all and upward Psychoanalysis. It was
one of those moments in which life seems to cast
(00:21):
away the mask of convention and spring upon us like
a giant, fanged and armed for our destruction. Of those
moments in which the bravest heart quails on the strongest
hope withers to despair. My crime had been committed for nothing.
Whether the death of that despicable villain lay at my
door or not, I did not know, and it hardly
seemed to matter any longer. Somewhere there was still in
(00:42):
existence the weapon with which he had terrorized his unhappy victim.
I could not tell in what hands, nor when it
might be employed to ruin her and meet together, whether
it's cunning schemes stood revealed in its full atrocity. His
patience had been divided into two classes, those who had
nothing serious on their conchances and those whom it was
not worth his while to blackmail. Received the ordinary treatment
(01:04):
given to nervous patients by respectable physicians. Those who came
to him to be cured of vicious propensities, on the
other hand, were encouraged to indulge them under his eye,
under the pretense that they would thus be gradually overcome,
And those who sought relief from evil memories were bidden
to rid their mind of its secret burthen and correspondence,
which he could be preserved for future use. As far
(01:25):
as I could judge, he had fallen into those evil
causes by degrees. Sir in Niobyd's defense of her stepfather
might not be far from the trues. I thought it
likely that such a man, as weather ed, with no
strong principle to keep him straight, might naturally have deteriorated
under the influence of his patients or the precautions with
which the confessional, as surrounded in Catholic churches, were waiting.
(01:46):
In this case, the doctor was probably a man without
any religious feeling, without any real scruples on the subjects
of morality. Instead of curing his patient, he had let
himself be confected with their disease the confessions he had
listened to, who had inflamed his own imagination and made
evil familiar to his thoughts. In the end, he had
come to take a fiendish pleasure in gloating over tales
(02:07):
of guilty, indulgence, and innocence betrayed. He delighted in the
analysis of women's hearts. He had learned to play upon
their sensitive natures like instruments, and draw the notes of
passion and pain. The devils in hell must soothe their
own torments with such music. It was torture enough for
me to think of my own tragedy as well as
violets provaned by the coarse curiosity of a blackmailer. If
(02:29):
I had sinned, I never could admit that she had
sinned at all. If I had sinned, at least I
had not done so wilfully and basely, but swept away
on the overpowering flood of that tremendous impulse, by which
all the planets move in heaven, and all the earth
is wrapped in their green garment, and all the birds
burst into song, and all the race of man is renewed.
For ever, our sad romance began in the purest innocence.
(02:53):
I did not know of her existence on that morning,
when I set out with a knapsack on my back
to explore the old borderland of England and Wales. No
fixed plans. I meant to walk. A fancy took me
and stop when I felt inclined, and the last thing
I expected was that I should pass all my holiday
on one spot. It was not till I reached the
village that I heard of the ruins that lay hid
in at the back of the Earl of Ledbury's stately seat,
(03:15):
and was persuaded to turn aside and see them. I
was told that a footpath leading from the church eyed
up the hill, would bring me past them, and as
far as I could make out, his lordship had laid
down no absolute rule against strangers going over them. I
was young and irresponsible enough to take the risk of
being turned out as a trespasser. I climbed over a
gate padlocked and fortified with barbed wire, crossed the meadow,
(03:37):
passed through a gap in the outer wall. I spent
half an hour in scrambling over heaps of fallen masonry.
Was just beginning to descend a broken stoway up which
I had climbed for the sake of the view, when
I saw standing on the grass near its foot the
loveliest girl I had ever seen. She was watching me
with the sly wonder of a child, and I came
down slowly, scarcely, daring to breathe, lest she should turn
(03:58):
and run away. But such thought was in her head.
I seemed to her a boy very little older than herself,
And it turned out that she had come to take
me under her protection. When I lifted my cap and
expressed the hope that I wasn't trespassing, she gave me
a cordial smile of a comrade and mischief. Yes, you
are chest passing, she said frankly, but they won't take
(04:20):
any notice if they see me speaking to you. I
saw you from my window when I came to prevent
any of the servants driving you away. I hardly know
which was more delicious, the simplicity or the friendliness of
the child Angel, as she was named already in my
thoughts that night I heard her story from the good
mistress of the farm. She had lost her mother as
soon as she was born, and as sometimes happens, she
(04:41):
had lost her place in her father's heart in consequence.
He was then a middle aged man, so Ife had
been the only woman he had ever cared for, and
she had borne him no other child. Life him was closed.
He resigned himself to let the earldom and the encumbered
estate passed his brother, and shut himself up with his
grief in the one house. But the corner of his
desolate house a violet. He took no more notice than
(05:04):
he could help. His sense of duty bade him gage
a strict governess direct that his daughter should be brought
up to marry money, since he could leave her nun
The governess conceived that the weight to obtain this end
was to keep the girl in absolute seclusion till a
suitable bridegroom was found, and then to thrust her into
his arms. The result was that her life had actually
been very much like that of a princess in a
(05:25):
fairy tale, who is immured in the tower and kept
from the sight of men. And I had been cast
unconsciously for the part of the fairy hero who scales
the tower and wins the maiden's heart. In the first
confusion of the meeting, I was far more tongue tied
than she. I guessed, of course, that she must be
the daughter of Lord Ledbury. And this was the first
time I had ever spoken to any one of her rank.
(05:47):
I was in doubt whether to address her with the
word ladyship. I think the awe with which her rank
inspired me had a great deal to do with what followed.
He lifted her so far above me in my own
mind that I was blind to her growing love, and
at first mistook my own love for the devotion of
a vassal to his queen. She talked to me about
the ruins holding me their spell bound till neither of
us could find more to say. At last, when I
(06:09):
felt obliged to come away, she asked me wistfully where
I was going, and I it made up my mind
already not to go if I could find the innis
use for staying in the neighborhood with any chance of
meeting her again, answered vaguely that I didn't know I
was looking. I told her for some place where I
could put up. Her whole face brightened when I said that,
and she cried eagerly. There's a farmhouse on the hill
(06:31):
where they take visitors in the summer, i'd, I don't
think they have any one yet. I often go past
it in my walks, and I haven't seen any strangers
about my heart exalted within me. There was to be
no walking tour for me that summer. When one has
come within the gates of paradise, how can he want
to wander? More? So I took off my knapsack in
the honeysuckle porch of the little farmhouse and stayed on.
(06:54):
It chanced, for our undoing that the street governess had
gone away for her own holiday a day or two
before I came, and did not returned till it was
time for me to exile myself from Eden. While it
was left alone, nor calls had come to the castle
for many years. There were no neighbors in her own
station of life within many miles. The clergyman was an
old bachelor, interested only in Butterfli's moths, of which he
(07:15):
had a wonderful collection, and blind to everything that went
on in his parish. If our romance has watched, I
have no doubt that it was watched by many curious
eyes are known to us. None of the watches dared
to carry tales of his daughter to the Earl of Ledbury.
Violet saw her father twice at day at meals, and
he never dreamed of asking her how she spent her
time between the Golden Month rolled by. The first few days,
(07:37):
each of us made believe that our meetings were accidental,
But soon we ceased to pretend that it was chance
that had led her steps up the hill and led
mine down them to the wood in which we came together.
We explored the hills and company roused in the partridges
from the corner, and rabbits from the fern. The woodpigeons
cooed and wheeled above our heads, Robins peeped at us
(07:58):
from the hedges, and the squirrels from the tree. We
stood beside the lonely Cromledge, named after the mythical hero
who held the Saxon hosts at bay. When we looked
down into the golden valleys, saw the peaks of the
Welsh mountains far away, and we were happy. Lightly, oh
lightly broke upon me the knowledge that she loved me.
(08:19):
What I had never hoped for had come to pass.
I had been content to worship her in silence. And
Dimien might so have worshiped Artemis if he had been
the first to see her bottom. The weaver might so
have worshiped Titania if the magic juice had touched his eyelids.
Before hers, she had been as unapproachable in my eyes
as any inhabitant of the moonlit world of sleep. It
(08:41):
was with almost a pang, with the strange shrinking of
the heart, that I first perceived that she used morter
like myself, that I had awakened her. It seemed to
have broken into a temple and profaned the shrine. I
do not recollect that we said anything. One day, when
we were walking side by side along a sunken lane
that led to a little water, I stooped suddenly and
(09:01):
kissed her. From that day we were Sweetheart, as openly
as any rustic pair. To her, it was all as
natural as the romances she had read, and she could
never have had the least suspicion of the misgivings that
had vexed my soul. She seemed surprised even when I
touched on the social girl that separated us. She owned
sorrowfully that her father would never hear of such a match,
(09:22):
But she evidently took it for granted that I should
not heed its opposition. I was her knight, and it
was for me to overcome every obstacle in the way.
Her faith in me was perfect, All affection for her
father had been crushed out of her in childhood. She
had loved me more easily, and she loved me more
passionately because she had no one else to love. And
what were we to do? I was barely of age.
(09:44):
I was not qualified. I didn't mean to support except
a dwindling legacy that would soon be exhausted by the
time I was able to earn my first fee. The
knights of old seem never to have been troubled by
such hindrances as these. The dragons, they vanc was, were
creatures who could be subdued by strength of arm. They
never had to ride into anything worse than an ogre's
castle or wizard's cave. The terrace of the bank parlor
(10:06):
and the house agent's office were unknown to them. They
never had to face a baker or a butcher armed
with his weekly bill. They put off as long as
I could, the pain of confessing to Violet that these
dragons of the way must take years to vanquish, And
at first she hardly grasped what it would mean to her.
The mere waiting I could see would cost her less
than me. After all, courtip is a supreme time of womanhood.
(10:28):
Then she is queen. Indeed marriage for her dethronement. Her
bridle is like the glorious pyre on which the Hindu
widow once expired in religious ecstasy. It was not until
she realized that I was going that Violet broke down.
There the burden was shifted to the other side, to
lay the suffering of man, separation the suffering of woman.
(10:49):
They had my work to go back to, ihead, my friends,
and all the distractions of life in London. She had
nothing before her but her remote and solitary prism. We
had fallen into the way of meeting, most often in
the deserted barne. Its situation assured us for privacy more
secure than that of the lanes and woods. No one
could approach us without being seen, and no one ever
did approach. No one could see through the openings a
(11:11):
bare two inches wide in the thick wall, and no
one could overhear. A pile of bracken made our seat,
and there we rested many a long summer afternoon. The
battered doors were and wide to let us count the
windings of the river far below, while we talked of
all the coming years might bring. So it was there
we met on that last afternoon to say good bye.
He'd put off to the last moment any consideration of
(11:33):
what was to happen next. It made no plans to
meet again. I do not even know that Lord Lebray
had a house in London to which Violet was taken
at rare intervals when it happened to be without a tenant,
but all was under strict garden, more for business than
for pleasure. We not even discussed the plans for correspondence,
though it was evident that they could not right her
at her father's house without everything coming out. It was
(11:55):
understood between us that my very existence must be kept
secret if it were possible. Beyond that, we had not
found courage to face the situation, in no way to
face it at last, and it was too much for
us to bear. It seemed to both of us like death.
It was idle to think that we could part like that,
and certain if we should ever meet again. It was
a waste of breath to pronounce the word goodbye when
(12:16):
we were clinging to each other in the desperation of
young life in travail with its destiny. I dare not
try to recall that agony they saw the cross with
the footstep of a felon, and closed about the door.
When I had slain my love, I understood too late
what I had done. Her anguish was revelation to me
of what her utter purity had been. He passed out
from that brief frenzy into a strange world. The sun
(12:38):
had fallen from our sky, and Joshua could not have
called it back again. We were two specters in each
other's sight. I did not ask her to forgive me.
I could not forgive myself. Rather would have begged her
to reproach me. But no such thought was in her mind.
Her whole feeling was one of horror what she had
destroyed in herself. I was only hateful to her as
(12:59):
the mirror in which she had seen her unknown self.
She moved her lips to inform me never to let
her see me again. She shuddered past me and went
down the hill with the stumbling gait of a wounded bird.
I know there are some men, and there may be
some women, who will think that I was a fool
to let her go. They will tell me that I
ought not to have taken her at her word, that
if I had waited in a short time she would
(13:20):
have recovered, and the breach might have been patched up
and the wound healed. They cannot tell if they are right.
Only know that I bade her the third from her neighborhood,
with no hope of ever coming back. And so the
lonely girl left herself with no one to confide in,
brooded over her secret till it became like a vipe
and gnawing at her heart. How she came to hear
(13:41):
of the Charlatan she had not told me, somehow or other.
During one of her stays in her father's house in town,
the news reached her of the new science of psychoanalysis,
of the practitioner who undertook to do what might beath
long for in vain, to pluck from a memory a
rooted sorrow and erase the writing from the tablets of
the brain. She went to him, of course, without consulting
(14:01):
those about her, and from that moment she became his
helpless prey. What arts he used to beguile her, it
is easy to guess. At first she believed in him,
and when her suspicion began to be aroused, she was
already in his power and dared not break with him.
By this time, the Earl of Ledbury and the Duenna
had put their heads together and decided that Lady Violet
(14:21):
must pass a season in London and be seen in
the great world. A consequence, she had much more liberty.
She made some girl friends whom she was allowed to
go about with, and among them were not a few
who held modern notions on the rights of girlhood, and
were ready to encourage and to screen her into the
courses into which he was compelled by her task master.
The most intimate comrade willingly became a member of the
(14:43):
Domino Club. But not even to her most intimate friend
dared Violet disclose the true situation. While she still trusted
in Weatherwards and believed in his power to heal her
soul of sin. She had written the whole story of
our love in letters which the scount would now refuse
to give up, except as the price of a far surrender.
There was only one being in the world whom she
could appeal to without the risk of further shame, and
(15:05):
thus we met again. The Medical Directory gave her my address,
and she wrote to me at Sir Frank's Tarlatan's. But
her letter begged for a strictly private interviune. In such
urgent language, I thought it safer not to let her
come there. Asked her to meet me at the corner
of Shaftesbury Avenue, as though by accident. I took her
to the little room which I could call my own.
(15:25):
Nearly four years had gone by since our tragic parting,
But when we stood face to face again, they did
not seem four hours. While its face changed from red
to white and back again, as she half held out
a trembling hand and dropped it woefully, my hand trembled
too as I raised it to my hat. I thought
it best to say nothing, except a few words necessary
to explain where we were going, and she seemed glad
(15:46):
to keep silent till we were safely there. The story
she had to tell were so appalling, and the effort
of telling it cost her so much, that naturally a
good deal was left out. Certainly I quite failed to
gather from her that whether it had induced her to
make her confession to him, and lets I suppose that
he had taken it down from her lips. It is
the familiar practice of West End consultants who see their
(16:07):
patience at long intervals to make a careful entry of
all the particulars of the case for future reference. I
supposed that Weather had taken advantage of this to make
a damning record in his case book should be quite
sufficient to enable him to blast his victims as a reputation,
though it might not be evidence in a lawyer's eyes.
The truth is that I was myself too agitated to
(16:27):
go into the matter carefully, even if Violet had been
in a state to be cause examined. Poland who resolved
itself into a series of wild outbreaks on her part,
attempts to assure her on mine. Indeed, they hardly know
that we arrived at any clear understanding what she was
asking of me or what I was promising her. The
one thing clear to me is that the only way
to save her would be for me to get the
doctor's case book and destroy it, and to do that
(16:49):
I must obtain his keys. What Violet had told me
about the Domino Club and their meetings in that accursed
place gave me my plan. I would do what I
could not ask her to do. All that was necess
so was that I should be able to approach Weathered
without putting him on his guard. I must disguise myself
in a costume with which he was familiar, one which
would allure him, and in which I could play the
(17:11):
part of the sword rather than the seeker. And so
the fatally easy plot took shape. There was barely an
inch between violent and me in height, and that inch
would be concealed by the zenobia helmet. It would not
be too difficult for me to imitate for an hour
or two the lighter movements of a woman, whether read
would be quite suspicious. The dress, the artificial light, the
noise and excitement of the revel would all be in
(17:33):
my favor. The doctor I gathered drank freely on these occasions.
I had only to wait till the night was advanced
and the wine had done its work. I told the
distressed girl as little as possible of what I meant
to do or to attempt. I said merely that I
must seek weathered, and that it would be the best
way for me to impersonate. Ever, one night she consented
readily enough. What else could she do? She told me
(17:55):
the date of the next dance, and undertook to send
them asking costume to my room some days beforehand, so
that I should have time to see that it fitted,
and to practice moving about with it on. We did
not bid each other any formal farewell. The thing was
said about our next meeting. Indeed, I felt no confidence
that there would be another. She had been driven to
appeal to me in her extremity, but she showed no
(18:17):
sign of having forgiven me. Rather, she seemed to find
every moment painful that she passed with me. All the time,
she was struggling with herself, trying to speak to me
as if I were a stranger whom she found herself
obliged to trust, but continually faltering and letting her voice
die down to a broken whisper. When I had let
her out at the street door, she hurried away blindly,
like an escaping prisoner, And as soon as she was
(18:38):
out of sight, they hastened round to Montague Street and
locked myself up in Talaton's arsenal of Poisons. End of
Chapter twelve, Red Bay and Curl
Chapter twelve of the Club of Masks. This is LibriVox recording.
All LibriVox recordings were in the public domain. From more
information at ald here, please visit librox dot org. The
Club of Masks By all and upward Psychoanalysis. It was
one of those moments in which life seems to cast
(00:21):
away the mask of convention and spring upon us like
a giant, fanged and armed for our destruction. Of those
moments in which the bravest heart quails on the strongest
hope withers to despair. My crime had been committed for nothing.
Whether the death of that despicable villain lay at my
door or not, I did not know, and it hardly
seemed to matter any longer. Somewhere there was still in
(00:42):
existence the weapon with which he had terrorized his unhappy victim.
I could not tell in what hands, nor when it
might be employed to ruin her and meet together, whether
it's cunning schemes stood revealed in its full atrocity. His
patience had been divided into two classes, those who had
nothing serious on their conchances and those whom it was
not worth his while to blackmail. Received the ordinary treatment
(01:04):
given to nervous patients by respectable physicians. Those who came
to him to be cured of vicious propensities, on the
other hand, were encouraged to indulge them under his eye,
under the pretense that they would thus be gradually overcome,
And those who sought relief from evil memories were bidden
to rid their mind of its secret burthen and correspondence,
which he could be preserved for future use. As far
(01:25):
as I could judge, he had fallen into those evil
causes by degrees. Sir in Niobyd's defense of her stepfather
might not be far from the trues. I thought it
likely that such a man, as weather ed, with no
strong principle to keep him straight, might naturally have deteriorated
under the influence of his patients or the precautions with
which the confessional, as surrounded in Catholic churches, were waiting.
(01:46):
In this case, the doctor was probably a man without
any religious feeling, without any real scruples on the subjects
of morality. Instead of curing his patient, he had let
himself be confected with their disease the confessions he had
listened to, who had inflamed his own imagination and made
evil familiar to his thoughts. In the end, he had
come to take a fiendish pleasure in gloating over tales
(02:07):
of guilty, indulgence, and innocence betrayed. He delighted in the
analysis of women's hearts. He had learned to play upon
their sensitive natures like instruments, and draw the notes of
passion and pain. The devils in hell must soothe their
own torments with such music. It was torture enough for
me to think of my own tragedy as well as
violets provaned by the coarse curiosity of a blackmailer. If
(02:29):
I had sinned, I never could admit that she had
sinned at all. If I had sinned, at least I
had not done so wilfully and basely, but swept away
on the overpowering flood of that tremendous impulse, by which
all the planets move in heaven, and all the earth
is wrapped in their green garment, and all the birds
burst into song, and all the race of man is renewed.
For ever, our sad romance began in the purest innocence.
(02:53):
I did not know of her existence on that morning,
when I set out with a knapsack on my back
to explore the old borderland of England and Wales. No
fixed plans. I meant to walk. A fancy took me
and stop when I felt inclined, and the last thing
I expected was that I should pass all my holiday
on one spot. It was not till I reached the
village that I heard of the ruins that lay hid
in at the back of the Earl of Ledbury's stately seat,
(03:15):
and was persuaded to turn aside and see them. I
was told that a footpath leading from the church eyed
up the hill, would bring me past them, and as
far as I could make out, his lordship had laid
down no absolute rule against strangers going over them. I
was young and irresponsible enough to take the risk of
being turned out as a trespasser. I climbed over a
gate padlocked and fortified with barbed wire, crossed the meadow,
(03:37):
passed through a gap in the outer wall. I spent
half an hour in scrambling over heaps of fallen masonry.
Was just beginning to descend a broken stoway up which
I had climbed for the sake of the view, when
I saw standing on the grass near its foot the
loveliest girl I had ever seen. She was watching me
with the sly wonder of a child, and I came
down slowly, scarcely, daring to breathe, lest she should turn
(03:58):
and run away. But such thought was in her head.
I seemed to her a boy very little older than herself,
And it turned out that she had come to take
me under her protection. When I lifted my cap and
expressed the hope that I wasn't trespassing, she gave me
a cordial smile of a comrade and mischief. Yes, you
are chest passing, she said frankly, but they won't take
(04:20):
any notice if they see me speaking to you. I
saw you from my window when I came to prevent
any of the servants driving you away. I hardly know
which was more delicious, the simplicity or the friendliness of
the child Angel, as she was named already in my
thoughts that night I heard her story from the good
mistress of the farm. She had lost her mother as
soon as she was born, and as sometimes happens, she
(04:41):
had lost her place in her father's heart in consequence.
He was then a middle aged man, so Ife had
been the only woman he had ever cared for, and
she had borne him no other child. Life him was closed.
He resigned himself to let the earldom and the encumbered
estate passed his brother, and shut himself up with his
grief in the one house. But the corner of his
desolate house a violet. He took no more notice than
(05:04):
he could help. His sense of duty bade him gage
a strict governess direct that his daughter should be brought
up to marry money, since he could leave her nun
The governess conceived that the weight to obtain this end
was to keep the girl in absolute seclusion till a
suitable bridegroom was found, and then to thrust her into
his arms. The result was that her life had actually
been very much like that of a princess in a
(05:25):
fairy tale, who is immured in the tower and kept
from the sight of men. And I had been cast
unconsciously for the part of the fairy hero who scales
the tower and wins the maiden's heart. In the first
confusion of the meeting, I was far more tongue tied
than she. I guessed, of course, that she must be
the daughter of Lord Ledbury. And this was the first
time I had ever spoken to any one of her rank.
(05:47):
I was in doubt whether to address her with the
word ladyship. I think the awe with which her rank
inspired me had a great deal to do with what followed.
He lifted her so far above me in my own
mind that I was blind to her growing love, and
at first mistook my own love for the devotion of
a vassal to his queen. She talked to me about
the ruins holding me their spell bound till neither of
us could find more to say. At last, when I
(06:09):
felt obliged to come away, she asked me wistfully where
I was going, and I it made up my mind
already not to go if I could find the innis
use for staying in the neighborhood with any chance of
meeting her again, answered vaguely that I didn't know I
was looking. I told her for some place where I
could put up. Her whole face brightened when I said that,
and she cried eagerly. There's a farmhouse on the hill
(06:31):
where they take visitors in the summer, i'd, I don't
think they have any one yet. I often go past
it in my walks, and I haven't seen any strangers
about my heart exalted within me. There was to be
no walking tour for me that summer. When one has
come within the gates of paradise, how can he want
to wander? More? So I took off my knapsack in
the honeysuckle porch of the little farmhouse and stayed on.
(06:54):
It chanced, for our undoing that the street governess had
gone away for her own holiday a day or two
before I came, and did not returned till it was
time for me to exile myself from Eden. While it
was left alone, nor calls had come to the castle
for many years. There were no neighbors in her own
station of life within many miles. The clergyman was an
old bachelor, interested only in Butterfli's moths, of which he
(07:15):
had a wonderful collection, and blind to everything that went
on in his parish. If our romance has watched, I
have no doubt that it was watched by many curious
eyes are known to us. None of the watches dared
to carry tales of his daughter to the Earl of Ledbury.
Violet saw her father twice at day at meals, and
he never dreamed of asking her how she spent her
time between the Golden Month rolled by. The first few days,
(07:37):
each of us made believe that our meetings were accidental,
But soon we ceased to pretend that it was chance
that had led her steps up the hill and led
mine down them to the wood in which we came together.
We explored the hills and company roused in the partridges
from the corner, and rabbits from the fern. The woodpigeons
cooed and wheeled above our heads, Robins peeped at us
(07:58):
from the hedges, and the squirrels from the tree. We
stood beside the lonely Cromledge, named after the mythical hero
who held the Saxon hosts at bay. When we looked
down into the golden valleys, saw the peaks of the
Welsh mountains far away, and we were happy. Lightly, oh
lightly broke upon me the knowledge that she loved me.
(08:19):
What I had never hoped for had come to pass.
I had been content to worship her in silence. And
Dimien might so have worshiped Artemis if he had been
the first to see her bottom. The weaver might so
have worshiped Titania if the magic juice had touched his eyelids.
Before hers, she had been as unapproachable in my eyes
as any inhabitant of the moonlit world of sleep. It
(08:41):
was with almost a pang, with the strange shrinking of
the heart, that I first perceived that she used morter
like myself, that I had awakened her. It seemed to
have broken into a temple and profaned the shrine. I
do not recollect that we said anything. One day, when
we were walking side by side along a sunken lane
that led to a little water, I stooped suddenly and
(09:01):
kissed her. From that day we were Sweetheart, as openly
as any rustic pair. To her, it was all as
natural as the romances she had read, and she could
never have had the least suspicion of the misgivings that
had vexed my soul. She seemed surprised even when I
touched on the social girl that separated us. She owned
sorrowfully that her father would never hear of such a match,
(09:22):
But she evidently took it for granted that I should
not heed its opposition. I was her knight, and it
was for me to overcome every obstacle in the way.
Her faith in me was perfect, All affection for her
father had been crushed out of her in childhood. She
had loved me more easily, and she loved me more
passionately because she had no one else to love. And
what were we to do? I was barely of age.
(09:44):
I was not qualified. I didn't mean to support except
a dwindling legacy that would soon be exhausted by the
time I was able to earn my first fee. The
knights of old seem never to have been troubled by
such hindrances as these. The dragons, they vanc was, were
creatures who could be subdued by strength of arm. They
never had to ride into anything worse than an ogre's
castle or wizard's cave. The terrace of the bank parlor
(10:06):
and the house agent's office were unknown to them. They
never had to face a baker or a butcher armed
with his weekly bill. They put off as long as
I could, the pain of confessing to Violet that these
dragons of the way must take years to vanquish, And
at first she hardly grasped what it would mean to her.
The mere waiting I could see would cost her less
than me. After all, courtip is a supreme time of womanhood.
(10:28):
Then she is queen. Indeed marriage for her dethronement. Her
bridle is like the glorious pyre on which the Hindu
widow once expired in religious ecstasy. It was not until
she realized that I was going that Violet broke down.
There the burden was shifted to the other side, to
lay the suffering of man, separation the suffering of woman.
(10:49):
They had my work to go back to, ihead, my friends,
and all the distractions of life in London. She had
nothing before her but her remote and solitary prism. We
had fallen into the way of meeting, most often in
the deserted barne. Its situation assured us for privacy more
secure than that of the lanes and woods. No one
could approach us without being seen, and no one ever
did approach. No one could see through the openings a
(11:11):
bare two inches wide in the thick wall, and no
one could overhear. A pile of bracken made our seat,
and there we rested many a long summer afternoon. The
battered doors were and wide to let us count the
windings of the river far below, while we talked of
all the coming years might bring. So it was there
we met on that last afternoon to say good bye.
He'd put off to the last moment any consideration of
(11:33):
what was to happen next. It made no plans to
meet again. I do not even know that Lord Lebray
had a house in London to which Violet was taken
at rare intervals when it happened to be without a tenant,
but all was under strict garden, more for business than
for pleasure. We not even discussed the plans for correspondence,
though it was evident that they could not right her
at her father's house without everything coming out. It was
(11:55):
understood between us that my very existence must be kept
secret if it were possible. Beyond that, we had not
found courage to face the situation, in no way to
face it at last, and it was too much for
us to bear. It seemed to both of us like death.
It was idle to think that we could part like that,
and certain if we should ever meet again. It was
a waste of breath to pronounce the word goodbye when
(12:16):
we were clinging to each other in the desperation of
young life in travail with its destiny. I dare not
try to recall that agony they saw the cross with
the footstep of a felon, and closed about the door.
When I had slain my love, I understood too late
what I had done. Her anguish was revelation to me
of what her utter purity had been. He passed out
from that brief frenzy into a strange world. The sun
(12:38):
had fallen from our sky, and Joshua could not have
called it back again. We were two specters in each
other's sight. I did not ask her to forgive me.
I could not forgive myself. Rather would have begged her
to reproach me. But no such thought was in her mind.
Her whole feeling was one of horror what she had
destroyed in herself. I was only hateful to her as
(12:59):
the mirror in which she had seen her unknown self.
She moved her lips to inform me never to let
her see me again. She shuddered past me and went
down the hill with the stumbling gait of a wounded bird.
I know there are some men, and there may be
some women, who will think that I was a fool
to let her go. They will tell me that I
ought not to have taken her at her word, that
if I had waited in a short time she would
(13:20):
have recovered, and the breach might have been patched up
and the wound healed. They cannot tell if they are right.
Only know that I bade her the third from her neighborhood,
with no hope of ever coming back. And so the
lonely girl left herself with no one to confide in,
brooded over her secret till it became like a vipe
and gnawing at her heart. How she came to hear
(13:41):
of the Charlatan she had not told me, somehow or other.
During one of her stays in her father's house in town,
the news reached her of the new science of psychoanalysis,
of the practitioner who undertook to do what might beath
long for in vain, to pluck from a memory a
rooted sorrow and erase the writing from the tablets of
the brain. She went to him, of course, without consulting
(14:01):
those about her, and from that moment she became his
helpless prey. What arts he used to beguile her, it
is easy to guess. At first she believed in him,
and when her suspicion began to be aroused, she was
already in his power and dared not break with him.
By this time, the Earl of Ledbury and the Duenna
had put their heads together and decided that Lady Violet
(14:21):
must pass a season in London and be seen in
the great world. A consequence, she had much more liberty.
She made some girl friends whom she was allowed to
go about with, and among them were not a few
who held modern notions on the rights of girlhood, and
were ready to encourage and to screen her into the
courses into which he was compelled by her task master.
The most intimate comrade willingly became a member of the
(14:43):
Domino Club. But not even to her most intimate friend
dared Violet disclose the true situation. While she still trusted
in Weatherwards and believed in his power to heal her
soul of sin. She had written the whole story of
our love in letters which the scount would now refuse
to give up, except as the price of a far surrender.
There was only one being in the world whom she
could appeal to without the risk of further shame, and
(15:05):
thus we met again. The Medical Directory gave her my address,
and she wrote to me at Sir Frank's Tarlatan's. But
her letter begged for a strictly private interviune. In such
urgent language, I thought it safer not to let her
come there. Asked her to meet me at the corner
of Shaftesbury Avenue, as though by accident. I took her
to the little room which I could call my own.
(15:25):
Nearly four years had gone by since our tragic parting,
But when we stood face to face again, they did
not seem four hours. While its face changed from red
to white and back again, as she half held out
a trembling hand and dropped it woefully, my hand trembled
too as I raised it to my hat. I thought
it best to say nothing, except a few words necessary
to explain where we were going, and she seemed glad
(15:46):
to keep silent till we were safely there. The story
she had to tell were so appalling, and the effort
of telling it cost her so much, that naturally a
good deal was left out. Certainly I quite failed to
gather from her that whether it had induced her to
make her confession to him, and lets I suppose that
he had taken it down from her lips. It is
the familiar practice of West End consultants who see their
(16:07):
patience at long intervals to make a careful entry of
all the particulars of the case for future reference. I
supposed that Weather had taken advantage of this to make
a damning record in his case book should be quite
sufficient to enable him to blast his victims as a reputation,
though it might not be evidence in a lawyer's eyes.
The truth is that I was myself too agitated to
(16:27):
go into the matter carefully, even if Violet had been
in a state to be cause examined. Poland who resolved
itself into a series of wild outbreaks on her part,
attempts to assure her on mine. Indeed, they hardly know
that we arrived at any clear understanding what she was
asking of me or what I was promising her. The
one thing clear to me is that the only way
to save her would be for me to get the
doctor's case book and destroy it, and to do that
(16:49):
I must obtain his keys. What Violet had told me
about the Domino Club and their meetings in that accursed
place gave me my plan. I would do what I
could not ask her to do. All that was necess
so was that I should be able to approach Weathered
without putting him on his guard. I must disguise myself
in a costume with which he was familiar, one which
would allure him, and in which I could play the
(17:11):
part of the sword rather than the seeker. And so
the fatally easy plot took shape. There was barely an
inch between violent and me in height, and that inch
would be concealed by the zenobia helmet. It would not
be too difficult for me to imitate for an hour
or two the lighter movements of a woman, whether read
would be quite suspicious. The dress, the artificial light, the
noise and excitement of the revel would all be in
(17:33):
my favor. The doctor I gathered drank freely on these occasions.
I had only to wait till the night was advanced
and the wine had done its work. I told the
distressed girl as little as possible of what I meant
to do or to attempt. I said merely that I
must seek weathered, and that it would be the best
way for me to impersonate. Ever, one night she consented
readily enough. What else could she do? She told me
(17:55):
the date of the next dance, and undertook to send
them asking costume to my room some days beforehand, so
that I should have time to see that it fitted,
and to practice moving about with it on. We did
not bid each other any formal farewell. The thing was
said about our next meeting. Indeed, I felt no confidence
that there would be another. She had been driven to
appeal to me in her extremity, but she showed no
(18:17):
sign of having forgiven me. Rather, she seemed to find
every moment painful that she passed with me. All the time,
she was struggling with herself, trying to speak to me
as if I were a stranger whom she found herself
obliged to trust, but continually faltering and letting her voice
die down to a broken whisper. When I had let
her out at the street door, she hurried away blindly,
like an escaping prisoner, And as soon as she was
(18:38):
out of sight, they hastened round to Montague Street and
locked myself up in Talaton's arsenal of Poisons. End of
Chapter twelve, Red Bay and Curl
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