A Duel
Copyright© 2024 by Richard Marsh
Chapter 36: Pleasant Dreams!
The duel had been fought to a finish, and Margaret had won.
When Mrs. Gregory Lamb was brought back out of that fit by which she had been overtaken she was lying on Cuthbert Grahame’s bed, on which he had lived for so long, and died at her hand; the bed whose image had been borne in upon her phantom-haunted brain with such horrible persistency. Dr. Twelves was bending over her, standing where he had stood many a time to bend over the man she slew. She was little better than a babbling idiot. She is not much more than that now. She is a certified lunatic, under kindly, yet watchful, guardianship, the expense of which is paid by the girl whom she so cruelly wronged.
The physical and mental strain which had been placed upon her during that period of increasing financial pressure had been great; her attempts to relieve it by a resort to ether had made it ten times greater. How much of the spirit she drank has not been exactly ascertained. She must have consumed large quantities. Probably only the natural strength of her constitution enabled her to resist its effects so long as she did. Undoubtedly the habit of ether drinking had increased in her to such an extent that in any case it would ultimately have produced insanity. Her reason was already tottering when she was brought face to face with Margaret Wallace on the night of her reception, and was put to such dire confusion. It is believed that she touched no solid food afterwards, subsisting solely upon ether. Isaac Luker asserted that she carried a large bottle of it in her bag when they journeyed together from London, and was sipping its contents throughout the day.
It was not strange that when the moment came she was ripe to fall a ready victim to Margaret’s carefully laid lures. The girl fought her with weapons to which she was incapable of offering resistance.
Cuthbert Grahame’s money, which had been searched for so long in vain, was found deposited in the hiding-place the secret of which she had revealed to Mrs. Lamb, intending, by working on her guilty conscience and so extorting from her a confession, which it was certain could never be obtained from her by any other means, to destroy her when she went to seek it. Margaret is now Mrs. Henry Talfourd. She is married to one who loved and loves her, and for the love of whom she was willing to sacrifice all. She is a rich woman. Bearing in mind the singularity of the circumstances under which it has come into her possession, she was desirous of having nothing to do with the dead man’s money. But it was pointed out that, excepting herself, there was no possible claimant. She regards herself as an almoner, as a steward of Cuthbert Grahame’s great possessions rather than their owner, and employs by far the larger portion of the income they produce in works of benefaction. She still produces pictures in black and white and in colour; there are few women artists who have achieved a more substantial success.