Wyllard's Weird (Mystery Classics Series). Mary Elizabeth BraddonЧитать онлайн книгу.
out her perplexities.
It was a fine spacious old bedroom, lighted by old-fashioned casement windows, looking two ways—one to the garden, one to that timber-belted lawn which might almost take rank as a park. There was a sitting-room adjoining, which was Hilda’s own particular apartment, containing her books and piano, and the little table on which she painted china cups and saucers. Hilda had spent many a happy hour in these rooms, practising, studying, painting, dreaming over high-art needlework. But this evening she felt as if she could never again be happy, here or anywhere. A dense cloud of trouble had spread itself around her, enfolding her as a mantle of darkness, shutting out all the light of life.
The sun was sinking behind the tall chestnuts, in a sea of red and gold. Every leaflet of rose or myrtle that framed the casements showed distinct against that clear evening sky. Such a pretty room within, such a lovely landscape and sky without; and yet that young soul was full of darkness.
She had defended her lover with indignant firmness just now. She had protested his innocence—declared that this thing could not be true; and now in solitude she looked in the face of that cruel slander, and her faith began to waver.
What could be stranger or more suspicious than Bothwell’s conduct this evening? With one breath he had avowed his love; with the next he had told her that he was unworthy to be her lover—that they two could never be man and wife.
Yes, it was true that he had changed of late—that he had become gloomy, despondent, fitful. His manner had been that of a man bowed down by the burden of some secret trouble. But was he for this reason to be suspected of a horrible crime? It was abominable of people to suspect him—most of all cruel and unworthy in her brother, who had known him from boyhood.
And then came the hideous suggestion, as if whispered in her ear by the fiend himself, “What if my brother should be right?” Her own experience of the world was of the slightest. Her chief knowledge of life was derived from the novels she had read. She had read of darkest deeds, of strange contradictions in human nature, mysterious workings of the human heart. Hitherto she had considered these lurid lights, these black shadows, as the figments of the romancer’s fancy. Now she began to ask herself if they might not find their counterpart in fact.
She had read of gentlemanlike murderers—assassins of good bearing and polished manners—Eugene Aram, Count Fosco, and many more of the same school. What if Bothwell Grahame were such as these, hiding behind his frank and easy manner the violent passions of the criminal?
No, she would not believe it. She laughed the foul fiend to scorn. Her woman’s instinct was truer than her brother’s legal acumen, she told herself; and as for those Bodmin busybodies, she weighed their wisdom as lighter than thistledown.
“I would marry him tomorrow, if he asked me to be his wife,” she said to herself. “I would stand beside him at the altar, before the face of all his slanderers. I should be proud to bear his name.”
She blushed crimson at her own boldness, as she stood before her mirror, with hands clasped, in all the fervour of a vow; but from that moment her faith in Bothwell Grahame knew no wavering.
* * * * *
In an age when infidelity and scorn of religious ceremonial is very common among young men, Bothwell Grahame had always been steadfast to the Church, and to the good old-fashioned habits in which he had been brought up by his aunt. He was not a zealot, or an enthusiast; but he attended the services of his church with a fair regularity, and had a proper respect for the rector of his parish. Even in India, where men are apt to be less orthodox than at home, Bothwell had always been known as a good Churchman.
For the last year it had been his custom to receive the sacrament on the first Sunday of the month. He had risen early, and had walked across the dewy fields to the old parish church, and had knelt among the people who knew him, and had felt himself all the better for that mystic office, even when things were going far from well with him. There was much that was blameworthy in his life; yet he had not felt himself too base a creature to kneel among his fellow-sinners at the altar of the Sinner’s Friend.
It was a shock, therefore, to receive a letter from the Rector on the last day of August, requesting him to absent himself from the communion service on the following Sunday, lest his presence before that altar should be a scandal to the other communicants.
* * * * *
“God forbid that I should condemn any man unheard,” wrote the Rector; “but you can hardly be unaware of the terrible scandal attaching to your name. You have not come to me, as I hoped you would come, to explain the conduct which has given rise to that scandal. You have taken no step to set yourself right before your fellow-men. Can you wonder that your own silence has been in somewise your condemnation? My duty to my flock compels me to warn you that, until you have taken some steps to free your character from the shadow that now darkens it, you must not approach the altar of your parish church.
“If you will come to me, and open your heart to me, as the sinner should to his priest, I may be able to counsel and to help you. If you can clear yourself to me, I will be your advocate with your fellow-parishioners.——Always your friend,
“JOHN MONKHOUSE.”
* * * * *
“He did wisely to write,” said Bothwell, crushing the letter in his clenched fist. “If he had spoken such words as those to me, I believe I should have knocked him down, priest though he is.”
He answered the Rector’s letter within an hour after receiving it.
* * * * *
“I have nothing to confess,” he wrote, “and that is why I have not gone to your confessional. The difficulties and perplexities of my life are such as could only be understood by a man of my own age and surroundings. They would be darker than Sanscrit to clerical gray hairs.
“Because I did not choose to answer questions which I could not answer without betraying the confidence of a friend, my wise fellow-parishioners have agreed to suspect me of murdering a girl whose face I never saw till after her death.
“I shall attend to receive the sacrament at the eight-o’clock service next Sunday, and I dare you to refuse to administer it.——I have the honour to be, yours, &c. BOTHWELL GRAHAME.”
* * * * *
He walked to Bodmin and delivered his letter at the Rectory door. He would not run the risk of an hour’s delay. On his way home he overtook Hilda, near the gates of The Spaniards. She was very pale when they met, and she grew still paler as they shook hands.
After a word or two of greeting, they walked on side by side in silence.
“I wonder that you can consent to be seen with me,” said Bothwell presently, after a farmer’s wife had driven past them on her way from market. “You must have heard by this time what people think about me—your brother foremost among them, I believe, for he has given me the cut direct more than once since the inquest.”
“I am sorry that he should be so ready to believe a lie,” said Hilda, “for I know that this terrible slander is a lie.”
“God bless you for those straight, strong words, Hilda!” exclaimed Bothwell fervently. “Yes, it is a lie. I am not a good man. I have taken one false step in my life, and the consequences of that mistake have been very heavy upon me. But I am not capable of the kind of wickedness which my Bodmin friends put down to me. I have not risen to the sublimer heights of crime. I am not up to throwing a fellow-creature out of a railway-carriage.”
“Why did you not answer that man’s questions at the inquest?” asked Hilda urgently, forgetting that she had hardly the right to demand his confidence. “That refusal of yours is the cause of all this misery. It seems such a foolish, obstinate act on your part.”
“I daresay it does. But I could not do more or less than I did. To have answered that inquisitive cur’s prying questions categorically would have been to injure a lady. As a man of honour, I was bound to run all risks rather than do that.”
“I