“O, Agnes! my wedding-day — my wedding-day!”
She held out her entreating hands as if she would have warded off the cruel words as she would ward a blow.
“Dudley Carleon poisoned his brother Martin!”
One long piteous wail escaped from the white lips of the bride, as she fell prostrate at the feet of Agnes.
“I have no proof of this, or I would have made that proof ring through the length and breadth of the land. I have no proof, but I have — conviction!”
Jenny lifted her white face from the floor, and dragging herself on to her knees, once more looked up at the speaker. “No proof?”
“None. But I know it — I know it! I was at the Grey Farm on the night of Martin Carleon’s death. I saw that man’s ghastly face and shaking hand as he stood by his brother’s bedside meddling with the medicine-bottles. It was from his hand the draught was taken which was to allay, but which only increased, the mortal sickness, and tormenting thirst, and burning fever. His dark shadow was never lifted from that weary bed. Fidelity! Devotion! Yes, the fidelity of a murderer to his deadly purpose; the devotion of the executioner to his unconscious victim. I tell you, child, our eyes met only once upon that awful night, and in that one glance I saw and knew his guilt. I know it: and he knows that I know it!”
“Agnes, Agnes!”
“Martin Carleon died from the effects of slow poison administered by his brother. Now go back to your husband. I have done with you, Mrs. Carleon!”
“O, Agnes! how cruel, how heartless, how pitiless and unchristian! And is it by a vague suspicion — an idea as unfounded as it is hideous — that you would brand an innocent man? I pity you, Agnes, for being the victim to so horrible a delusion.”
She rose from her knees, and going to the toilet-table, wiped away her blinding tears, and rearranged her hair with a hand that scarcely trembled. As she did this, she watched the reflection of Agnes Marlow’s haggard face in the glass before which she stood. She began to think that Dudley Carleon must indeed be right, and that grief had driven the Rector’s daughter mad. Agnes sat on the little white-curtained bed, with hollow eyes, following Jenny’s rapid movements at the dressing-table.
“God help us both!” she murmured, clasping her attenuated hands; “God help us, and lend us His light to guide ns in this blind, dark world. Something stronger than myself possessed me, and I could not keep silence.”
CHAPTER V. A CHEERLESS HEARTH.
AGNES MARLOW returned to Scarborough. Her health was broken, her spirits gone, and there were people in Olney who shared Dudley Carleon’s opinion, and believed that her reason had been in some degree unsettled by her lover’s untimely death.
The first four months of Jenny Carleon’s married life passed peacefully away. Dudley was a kind and an attentive husband, and there was no fault whatever to be found with him in his new position. The Grey Farm was certainly rather a dull abode for Jenny, whose life had been chiefly spent at a boarding-school at the West-end of London; but she had her piano, her books and drawing-materials, a pet dog, and an old gray pony, on which she rode about her husband’s fields while he superintended the men; for since Ralph’s departure Dudley Carleon had devoted himself entirely to the management of his farm.
Not a word had ever been uttered by Mrs. Carleon on the subject of that stormy interview between herself and Agnes Marlow. Often in the dead of the night she awoke suddenly by the side of her sleeping husband, with the echo of those terrible words ringing in her ears, as if someone had just spoken them at her pillow. She had never for one moment thought of them except as of the hallucination of an enfeebled mind; but she could no more forget them than she could forget her own name.
Sometimes seated alone in the twilight, by the fire in the low oak parlour, surrounded by the distorted shadows of the furniture upon the dark panelled walls, thinking of things as far away from the scene of her bridal morning as it is possible for one thing to be from another — in a moment, in a breath, a hissing whisper at her ear would shape with supernatural distinctness these two horrible sentences:
“Dudley Carleon poisoned his brother Martin.”
“Martin Carleon died from the effects of slow poison administered by his brother.”
But this was not the worst; for she could find that by degrees she grew to be perpetually repeating these words to herself involuntarily, as one repeats a line of verse from mere absence of mind. At her needlework, busy with her pencils and colours — even at the piano — she caught herself silently reiterating these hateful phrases. They would fit themselves to the notes of her favourite pieces of music, and she trembled to think that one day she might unconsciously utter them aloud.
The new year came, cold and rainy. The weather kept Jenny a prisoner to the house. Dudley was often out. She had few visitors, for her Olney acquaintances dreaded the wet walk on the muddy bank of the river.
“Why had she married Dudley Carleon?”
She sometimes asked herself this question, as if she had suddenly awoke from a long sleep to find herself in a strange country.
She did not love him, she did not even admire him, but she had allowed him to gain so strong an influence over her, that it was only now and then she remembered this, — only now and then she asked herself wonderingly, “Why did I marry him?”
She was not unhappy, — only sometimes lonely and dreary in the gaunt stone house, with its great comfortless rooms and low oaken ceilings, that always seemed to her as if they would some day slowly descend and crush her to death.
The light-hearted girl grew grave and quiet amongst the shadows of the solemn farmhouse. Dudley, kind as he was, was silent and reserved, and had fits of such strange abstraction, of preoccupation so intense and gloomy, that his wife shrank from addressing him. She would sit at her drawing-board with the pencil in her hand, and the colours drying on her palette, watching his rigid face as he sat by the hearth with an unread book open in his hand.
There were times when his silence would exercise so oppressive an influence upon her, that she was fain to steal quietly from the room, and remain away for hours; only to find him, perhaps, on her return, in the same attitude, with unchanged countenance, sitting brooding over a heap of black cinders.
He would apologise for these long reveries by saying he was tired, that he overworked himself, that the farm gave him a great deal of trouble, or that he was anxious about his Buckinghamshire property.
One morning, towards the end of January, he found a letter lying on the breakfast-table in the stiff handwriting of his bailiff. It was a much longer letter than usual, and Jenny saw by her husband’s face that its contents were not agreeable.
“Jenny, I shall have to go to Buckinghamshire,” said Dudley.
“To Buckinghamshire! Why?”
“Ralph’s letter tells me he is in a difficulty about the farm, and must have my advice before he stirs a step; I must go this very morning.”
Before she could answer him he had crumpled the letter in his hand, flung it into the fire, and left the room. She heard him ordering his horse to be brought round immediately. He came in hurriedly to wish her good-bye, promised to return to Lincolnshire in a day or two, and galloped off to catch the London express.
Reserved and silent as her husband was, Jenny felt unhappy in this his first absence. The servants, and the great rough farming-men about the place, were strange to her, — their very dialect almost unintelligible. She was lonely and uncomfortable among them, and she wandered in and out of the solitary rooms in which the great bare windows opened upon the chill winter sky, longing for Dudley’s return.
Two days and two nights, and the best part of the third day dragged themselves out, and he had not returned.
“He will come to-night,” she said; and she ordered huge fires to be piled in the grates, till the flames went roaring up the wide chimneys, and a red reflection shone in every panel of the dark wainscot.
It was a bitter evening; but at five o’clock, the hour at
which a London train came in, she went out with a shawl thrown loosely over her head, and stood for a long time, looking anxiously down the dim pathway by the river bank. She did not return to the house until the Olney clocks chimed the three-quarters after five.
“He will be here by the nine-o’clock train,” she said; but seven, eight, nine, ten o’clock struck; the fire burned low, and her heart sank with a weary feeling of loneliness, for still he did not come.
The old housekeeper, and the parlour-maid who waited upon Mrs. Carleon, recommended her to go to bed, for ten o’clock was considered a late hour at the Grey Farm; but there was a mail-train that came into Olney at half-past one in the morning, and Jenny insisted on sitting up in case her husband should come by that. She sent the servants to bed after having made one of them instruct her in the mysteries of the bolts, bars, and chains of the hall-door; and, the fires having been once more replenished, she sat down in her low chair by the hearth to wear out the three hours which must elapse before her husband’s return.
She drew closer and closer to the blazing fire, she wrapped herself in a thick shawl, but in spite of all she shivered violently.
“I have caught Martin Carleon’s ague,” she said, “on the bank of that dismal river.”
The words seemed to strike a chill to her heart, for they brought back the scene of her wedding-day, and Agnes Marlow’s horrible accusation.
A portrait of the last owner of the farm hung in the shadow at the end of the room — a frank, genial face, with waving chestnut hair and bright blue eyes. The thought of the dead man haunted her in the dreary silence. She tried not to look at his picture; she turned her back to the panel where it hung. What if his likeness should descend from the shadowy panel, and, stealing noiselessly behind her, lay an impalpable hand upon her shoulder? She was not superstitious, but her monotonous life had weakened her nerves, and she felt as if she were alone with the dead. What if this painted image should shape itself into a phantom, and approach her? What if on rushing to the door to escape the phantom, she should find it locked, and herself a prisoner with this ghastly companion? What if those painted lips were to be miraculously unsealed, and an unearthly voice were to tell her that the words uttered by Agnes Marlow were an awful truth?
The cold perspiration broke out in great beads upon her forehead.
“I shall go mad,” she said, “if I am long alone.”
Once she rose from her seat, determined to call up one of the servants, but she had not the courage to traverse the dark hall and the back-staircase leading to their rooms — scarcely courage to pass the picture hanging between the fireplace and the door.
What, she thought, if she had indeed caught the ague or the fever that had killed her husband’s brother? What if she lay for weeks upon a weary bed, tended and watched by Dudley Carleon? Every syllable spoken by Agnes came back to her, and she seemed to see her husband, with a quiet step and a white, tremulous hand, jingling the thin glass of the medicine-bottles. The slow hands of the clock above the chimney-piece went silently round. She heard the distant chimes of Olney church, each several quarter seeming an hour to her impatience.
One — a quarter-past — half-past — three-quarters: two — a quarter-past two. The last white ashes dropped through the lowest bars of the grate. Three loud blows resounded upon the stout panel of the hall-door.
“O, thank Heaven, thank Heaven!” she said, springing from her seat; “how stupid have I been, and how I can afford to laugh at myself now that he has come!”
She caught up a candle from the table, flew into the hall, and began to unfasten the door, holding the candle still in one hand, and fumbling with the bolts, in her nervous but joyful agitation.
“Dudley,” she said, “Dudley, I won’t be long; be patient, I won’t be long.” But the heavy blows were repeated upon the door, and a gruff voice, muffled by the thick oak, uttered some impatient words.
A sudden terror seized her.
“Can he have been drinking?” she thought, “his voice sounds so thick and strange.”
“Dudley — now, now I have managed it.”
She turned the key with a great effort, and, letting down the chain, opened the door to its utmost width.
She felt for the first time in her life as if she really loved Dudley Carleon. She wanted to throw herself into his arms, to cling to him for protection and shelter.
A man in a slouched felt hat, a dark smock-frock, leathern gaiters, and great hob-nailed boots, strode across the threshold.
The lower part of his face was muffled in a coarse woollen handkerchief, but two sinister gray eyes looked out from under the shade of his hat.
Jenny did not remember having seen this man before, but the shock she experienced in meeting a stranger instead of her husband gave her an unwonted courage. She caught hold of a rope hanging near the doorway, a rope communicating with a great bell on the roof of the house, which was used to summon the men to their meals and to wake them in the morning. “Who are you?” she said, as the man flung down a knotted stick and a bundle in a red cotton handkerchief, and was about to pass her in the direction of the kitchen.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Muster Carleon’s bailiff, and maybe with as good a right to come into this house as Muster Carleon himself” said the man insolently.
“O, you are Purvis the bailiff, are you? Has your master sent you home?”
“Yes, I am Purvis; but my master ha’n’t sent me home. And pray, my pretty curly-haired Miss, who may you be?”
“Your master’s wife,” said Jenny haughtily.
The man stared at her rudely for two or three moments before he spoke.
“My master’s what?”
“His wife — Mrs. Carleon,” she said, looking him fall in the face, terrified, but not daunted, by his insolence.
The bailiff burst into a loud hoarse laugh. “Mr. Dudley Carleon’s wife! His right-down lawful wife! O, you’re that, are you? Give me the light,” he said, snatching the silver candlestick from her hand; “let’s have a look at yon, then, for you’re a bit of a curiosity.”
Jenny’s hand had never left the rope; she pulled it violently, and the bell upon the roof clamoured and shook through the winter night.
Three or four half-dressed men came tumbling down the back staircase before the bell had ceased ringing.
“This man says he is my husband’s bailiff,” said Jenny, as they crowded round her; “take him to his room and look after him. He has insulted me; but as he is evidently tipsy, I shall ask no explanation until Mr. Carleon’s return. Send Sarah to my room, James,” she added to one of the farm-servants, whose face she knew; “I will not sleep in the house alone while that man is under this roof.”
“O, indeed, my lass; do you think I’d murder you?”
“I think you are a bad man,” said Jenny, looking back at the bailiff as she slowly ascended the broad staircase.
“I wouldn’t stay here at all, if you’re so timid, Miss,” said Ralph, with a sneering laugh; “there’s others besides me, perhaps, to be afraid of at the Grey Farm.”
CHAPTER VI. IN THE DEAD OF THE NIGHT.
DUDLEY CARLEON came home early the next day, and found his wife confined to her room by a violent cold, while Ralph Purvis sat smoking his pipe over the kitchen-fire.
The young man was evidently unprepared for his bailiff’s arrival.
“What brought you down here?” he asked angrily.
“My business, and yours,” muttered Ralph, without taking his pipe from his mouth.
Dudley Carleon did not answer, but led the way into the dining-room, where he and Purvis were closeted together for nearly two hours.
In the course of this long interview the servants heard their master’s voice raised several times as if in anger, but the bailiff’s not once.
Mrs. Carleon came downstairs in the evening to her favourite seat by the fireplace in the oak-parlour. She had told her husband of Ralph’s conduct on his arrival; she had
told him, indeed, that she could not live happily while the bailiff was in the house.
“My dear Jenny, the man is unfortunately so useful to me that I cannot afford to get rid of him,” said Dudley; “but I shall send him back to Buckinghamshire in a week, at the latest; in the mean time he must apologise to you.” He rang the bell, and the bailiff came in, turning his hat round in his two great hands; sleek, humble, and respectful; utterly different from what he had been at half-past two o’clock that morning.
He made an elaborate and rambling apology, with a cringing politeness of manner, but with a sulky face and an ominous glitter in his deep-set gray eyes. He seemed as if he had been tutored in what he was to say; or almost as if he had been repeating something learned from a book. But the ground of his excuse was, that he had been drinking on the previous night, and was a little off his head, as he called it.
Mrs. Carleon bowed gravely when he had finished.
“Then you will look over it, Jenny?” asked her husband.
“O, certainly,” she replied coldly, turning away her head, for she hated to feel the glittering eyes of the bailiff fixed upon her face.
“If Agnes had told me that man was a poisoner, I could almost have believed her,” she thought, as Ralph left the room.
Jenny’s cold lasted for some days, and at her husband’s request the surgeon from Olney rode over one morning to see her.
“A slight attack of influenza,” he said, “nothing more; Mrs. Carleon is a little debilitated; I will send her some strengthening medicine.”
“It is not ague, is it?” asked Jenny anxiously.
“Ague! O dear no, nothing of the kind.”
“Nor fever?”
“No; you are not in the least feverish.”
“Why, Jenny, what are you thinking of?” asked her husband.
“I was thinking of your brother Martin’s death, and wondering whether any of my symptoms resembled his.”
Dudley Carleon started half out of his chair, and looked earnestly at his wife’s face; then, sighing deeply, he said, as he reseated himself:
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 1049
