So the Second Act ended.
Turning to the Third Act, Henry looked wearily at the pages as he let them slip through his fingers. Both in mind and body, he began to feel the need of repose.
In one important respect, the later portion of the manuscript differed from the pages which he had just been reading.
Signs of an overwrought brain showed themselves, here and there, as the outline of the play approached its end. The handwriting grew worse and worse. Some of the longer sentences were left unfinished.
In the exchange of dialogue, questions and answers were not always attributed respectively to the right speaker. At certain intervals the writer's failing intelligence seemed to recover itself for a while;only to relapse again, and to lose the thread of the narrative more hopelessly than ever.
After reading one or two of the more coherent passages Henry recoiled from the ever-darkening horror of the story. He closed the manuscript, heartsick and exhausted, and threw himself on his bed to rest.
The door opened almost at the same moment. Lord Montbarry entered the room.
'We have just returned from the Opera,' he said; 'and we have heard the news of that miserable woman's death. They say you spoke to her in her last moments; and I want to hear how it happened.'
'You shall hear how it happened,' Henry answered; 'and more than that.
You are now the head of the family, Stephen; and I feel bound, in the position which oppresses me, to leave you to decide what ought to be done.'
With those introductory words, he told his brother how the Countess's play had come into his hands. 'Read the first few pages,' he said.
'I am anxious to know whether the same impression is produced on both of us.'
Before Lord Montbarry had got half-way through the First Act, he stopped, and looked at his brother. 'What does she mean by boasting of this as her own invention?' he asked. 'Was she too crazy to remember that these things really happened?'
This was enough for Henry: the same impression had been produced on both of them. 'You will do as you please,' he said.
'But if you will be guided by me, spare yourself the reading of those pages to come, which describe our brother's terrible expiation of his heartless marriage.'
'Have you read it all, Henry?'
'Not all. I shrank from reading some of the latter part of it.
Neither you nor I saw much of our elder brother after we left school;and, for my part, I felt, and never scrupled to express my feeling, that he behaved infamously to Agnes. But when I read that unconscious confession of the murderous conspiracy to which he fell a victim, I remembered, with something like remorse, that the same mother bore us.
I have felt for him to-night, what I am ashamed to think I never felt for him before.'
Lord Montbarry took his brother's hand.
'You are a good fellow, Henry,' he said; 'but are you quite sure that you have not been needlessly distressing yourself?
Because some of this crazy creature's writing accidentally tells what we know to be the truth, does it follow that all the rest is to be relied on to the end?'
'There is no possible doubt of it,' Henry replied.
'No possible doubt?' his brother repeated. 'I shall go on with my reading, Henry--and see what justification there may be for that confident conclusion of yours.'
He read on steadily, until he had reached the end of the Second Act.
Then he looked up.
'Do you really believe that the mutilated remains which you discovered this morning are the remains of our brother?' he asked.
'And do you believe it on such evidence as this?'
Henry answered silently by a sign in the affirmative.
Lord Montbarry checked himself--evidently on the point of entering an indignant protest.
'You acknowledge that you have not read the later scenes of the piece,' he said. 'Don't be childish, Henry! If you persist in pinning your faith on such stuff as this, the least you can do is to make yourself thoroughly acquainted with it.
Will you read the Third Act? No? Then I shall read it to you.'
He turned to the Third Act, and ran over those fragmentary passages which were clearly enough written and expressed to be intelligible to the mind of a stranger.
'Here is a scene in the vaults of the palace,' he began. 'The victim of the conspiracy is sleeping on his miserable bed; and the Baron and the Countess are considering the position in which they stand.
The Countess (as well as I can make it out) has raised the money that is wanted by borrowing on the security of her jewels at Frankfort;and the Courier upstairs is still declared by the Doctor to have a chance of recovery. What are the conspirators to do, if the man does recover? The cautious Baron suggests setting the prisoner free.
If he ventures to appeal to the law, it is easy to declare that he is subject to insane delusion, and to call his own wife as witness.
On the other hand, if the Courier dies, how is the sequestrated and unknown nobleman to be put out of the way? Passively, by letting him starve in his prison? No: the Baron is a man of refined tastes;he dislikes needless cruelty. The active policy remains--say, assassination by the knife of a hired bravo? The Baron objects to trusting an accomplice; also to spending money on anyone but himself. Shall they drop their prisoner into the canal?
The Baron declines to trust water; water will show him on the surface.
Shall they set his bed on fire? An excellent idea; but the smoke might be seen. No: the circumstances being now entirely altered, poisoning him presents the easiest way out of it. He has simply become a superfluous person. The cheapest poison will do.--Is it possible, Henry, that you believe this consultation really took place?'
Henry made no reply. The succession of the questions that had just been read to him, exactly followed the succession of the dreams that had terrified Mrs. Norbury, on the two nights which she had passed in the hotel. It was useless to point out this coincidence to his brother. He only said, 'Go on.'
Lord Montbarry turned the pages until he came to the next intelligible passage.
