Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  He is a small man, lithe, muscular, with closely knit frame. He has a long thin face, black eyes that glow like burning coals, long black hair which he tosses back from the high wide brow, the brow of a Cæsar, as he pauses for a moment with the curtain in his hand and looks towards his audience, but not at them.

  It is an attitude to be remembered, that crouching movement, as of a tiger about to spring, the hand clutching the velvet curtain, the head thrust forward, serpent like, as if a forked sting were darting from those pale parted lips. Then with a sudden spring the man stands erect, tears back the curtain, and looks within.

  What does he see? A man and woman sitting at a chess table, in a Venetian chamber. The blue waters of the Adriatic, the white pinnacles of distant buildings shine through the wide window in front of which they two are seated.

  They have been playing, but are playing no more. It is all earnest now. The man leans across the table, the woman’s hand clasped in his. He looks up into her fair young face with an impassioned gaze, which she returns, yielding and subjugated.

  The man lets fall the velvet curtain, totters a few paces forward, and then with one long despairing cry, drops to the ground like a log.

  The act ends with this picture. But that last hoarse cry of the actor dwells with his audience after the curtain has gone down. It was almost too awful for human suffering. It was like the agonized howl of a tortured animal. It was the extreme expression of passion and despair in an utterly savage nature.

  The play had taken the town by storm, and the actor, who within the last two years had become.suddenly famous, had won new laurels in the part; but it was a tragedy not destined to immortality, and has sunk into the night of oblivion with many of its kind.

  But just now this Italian story of Love, Revenge and Murder, with Michael Elyard in the principal part, was the rage. The play drew crowded houses nightly, and Elyard was declared to have surpassed himself in the character of the Italian husband, a modern version of ‘Othello,’ without Othello’s nobleness.

  In the last act of the play the betrayed husband stabs his false wife in a garden at sunset, and hides the corpse among the rushes that fringe the canal. It was this scene of the murder which thrilled the audience, and sent them home rapturous and awestricken, to dream of Elyard’s white face and burning eyes, the black elf locks falling over the pale forehead, the lithe compact form clad in close fitting black velvet.

  To see him drag his victim from the fountain where he had slain her to the rushes that showed dark against the red light of the setting sun; to see him bend over the fair face, and in a sudden burst of passion, rain kisses upon the dead brow and cheeks; to see him lift the lifeless corpse upon his knee and try in a wild madness to charm it back to life, then fling it from him with a sudden yell of rage at the remembrance of its falsehood; and then to watch his convulsive movements, his furtive backward glances, the nervous quivering of his muscular limbs as he hid the dreadful thing among the rushes, while the sun sank lower and, the red sky took an intenser red, till all the scene seemed steeped in blood; to see all this was to drink a cup of horror that gave a keener zest to the enjoyment of a convivial meeting and an oyster supper after the play.

  To-night there are two men in a box near the stage, who watch the play with expression and bearing so opposite that the difference is something to be remarked. One leans with his arms folded upon the cushion of the box, his chin resting on his arms, and his eyes fixed intently on the scene. He loses not a movement nor a tone of the actors. The other lolls back in his chair, and surveys the stage through his eyeglass, attentive, discriminating, critical, but not entranced.

  The first is Captain Bywater, of His Majesty’s Navy, who has just come ashore after a cruise in the south seas, and has not seen a stage play for the last seven years. The second is Phillimore Dorrell, the famous criminal lawyer, who has seen this particular play five times.

  The two men are old schoolfellows at the Charter House, and have been dining together at a snug city tavern, where the floor is sanded and the burgundy is genuine.

  Not till the green curtain drops on a maddened suicide does Charles Bywater relax his gaze. Then he lifts his head pulls himself together with a shiver, as if waking out of a bad dream, and looks absently round the house.

  ‘Well, Charley, what do you think of Elyard in “The Venetian Husband.” A capital piece of acting, isn’t it?’

  ‘Acting,’ replied the other. ‘It’s not like acting. It’s like reality.’

  ‘Which all good acting must be.’

  ‘Yes; but I have seen good acting before to-night, which was not like this. I could not have believed that any man could do such things as this man does unless he were at heart a murderer.’

  ‘My dear fellow, that is to deny the possibility of consummate art. Your true artist imagines himself the being he represents. It is as easy for him to imagine himself a murderer, as to imagine himself a hero or a lover.’

  ‘Yes, in a broad, abstract way. But this man goes into the littlenesses of crime, the finest details, the most minute particulars.’

  ‘His imagination realizes these as readily as the broader outline. It is his wonderful appreciation of detail that makes his performance so masterly and so original. The fact is the man is a genius.’

  ‘Do you know him?’ asked the sailor, deeply interested.

  ‘Almost as well as I know you. He goes into the best society. He was at Oxford; and is a man of considerable refinement. I supped with him the other night.’

  ‘What!’exclaimed the Captain, ‘you eat with him after seeing him in this play. Did not you feel as if you were sitting down with a murderer?’

  ‘Not the least in the world. I felt that I was sitting down with a very agreeable acquaintance. A trifle self conscious, as most actors are; and rather too fond of talking about his art, but a perfect gentleman, notwithstanding. We had a discussion, by-the-way, after supper, which was peculiarly interesting to me, as a man whose experience has made him unhappily familiar with the physiology of crime.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘About murder. Elyard has an idea that a great many murders are committed in a century which never come to light, the secret of which dies and is buried with the victim of the crime. Now, I have just the opposite opinion. It is my fixed belief, founded upon long familiarity with the history of crime, that there is an inherent something in the crime of murder which makes its ultimate discovery inevitable.’

  ‘Shakespeare has expressed the same opinion rather more tersely,’ said Captain Bywater. ‘Blood will have blood.’

  ‘True,’ assented Mr. Dorrell, vexed at being interrupted in his preamble, ‘that’s Shakespeare’s rough and ready way of putting it. My theory is that from the moment a man becomes a criminal he becomes a blunderer. He is off the straight track, and is sure to take a wrong step. The murderer is playing the most desperate game a man can play, with all society on the other side. The odds against success are terrible. And then there is something in blood that stupefies a man. From the instant he stains his hands he begins to do idiotic things. He buries the body that he should have left unburied: or, he leaves it unburied when wisdom would have buried it. His crime has been hidden for a year or more, perhaps, and no finger has been pointed at him, when he takes it into his head all at once that his secret is in danger, and unearths his victim, and is caught with the ghastly proof of his crime in his arms. Or, when the deed is done, craven fear seizes hold of him, and he flies the scene of his guilt, and so betrays himself; or he keeps some shred or scrap of his victim’s garments; or he overacts the part of innocence in some way. Sooner or later his distempered spirit will lead him to some act of besotted idiocy, by which the deed he has done will be made clear to men’s eyes. He is never safe. Elyard seemed deeply interested in what I told him of my experience in the ways of criminals; but he was not convinced. He clings to the idea that there are murders which justice never hears of.’

  The afterpiece began, an
d Phillimore Dorrell hurried off to a convivial supper party, leaving Captain Bywater alone in the box.

  ‘You know my chambers, old fellow,’ he said at parting, ‘I shall be glad to see you whenever you can look in.’

  ‘That will be pretty often, Phil, depend upon it,’ answered the other, ‘but I’m going down to the country for a week or so before I enjoy myself in London.’

  ‘To see your people?’ inquired Dorrell.

  ‘My people are under the sod, Phil. I shall go and have a look at their graves; and I shall hunt up an old friend or two among the few that I knew in my boyhood.’

  CHAPTER II. LOVED AND LOST.

  CAPTAIN BYWATER started by coach early next morning. The scene of his birth was a quiet village among the Buckinghamshire hills, an out of the way rustic place, shut in and sheltered from cold winds and the biting breath of worldly men and women. A cluster of cottages, an old old church, with a low square tower, and a wonderful sun dial for its only ornament, two or three comfortable homesteads, a grange that had once been a grand mansion, and the good old red brick house still known as Squire Bywater’s, though the squire had been laid in his grave years ago, and Charley had let the house to an alien family who were said to do nothing for the poor; an accusation which might be taken to mean that they stopped short of giving away the greater part of their substance and leaving themselves poorer than their pensioners, as the dead and gone squire had done.

  It was a bright afternoon in May when the sailor alighted from the coach in front of the old inn, a cosy-looking low white house, with a golden sun for a sign, and bright red flower-pots in all the windows.

  How pretty the dear old village looked in the afternoon sunshine.

  What a blessed haven from the cares and struggles of the world, what a calm retreat, what an abode of innocence and peace. The gardens were all bright with blue forget-me-nots and yellow cowslips, roses just bursting into bloom. The last of the violets perfumed the air. The ruddy fire was glowing in the village forge. Hens were cackling, ducks quacking and splashing in the pond before the inn door. Rosy cheeked children looked up and grinned at the traveller, as at a being whose arrival was the next best thing to a peep show.

  All this was rapture to the sailor who had been seven years at sea. He took in everything with the eager glance of his lively gray eyes, and then he turned away from the inn, and looked long and thoughtfully at the old stone mansion yonder, with its dull neglected air.

  It was a good old Tudor house, standing back from the road, a wide lawn in front of its mullioned windows, two mighty cedars casting their dense shadows on the sunlit grass, clipped yew hedges, straight walks, and a garden that looked barren and uncared for.

  ‘Old Mr. Leeworthy is still living, I hope? ‘asked the Captain, turning to the inn-keeper, with a certain anxiety in his tone.

  ‘Yes, sir, the old gentleman is still alive. He must be going on for ninety — a wonderful old man! There are very few like him now-a-days. I’m very glad to see you back, sir, after so long. I hope yon are going to make a stay with us, now the war’s over. Shall I have your portmanteau taken up stairs, sir?’

  ‘Yes, I shall be here for a day or two.’

  ‘John, take Captain Bywater’s portmanteau to the blue room.’

  Charles Bywater’s gaze was still fixed on the old stone house on the opposite side of the village green.

  ‘You’ve dined on the road, mayhap, sir!’ said his host, ‘and you’d like a comfortable bit of supper, or a dish of tea.’

  ‘You can get me some supper at eight or nine o’clock, eggs and bacon — anything. I am going over to see old Mr. Lee worthy. His granddaughter is as pretty as ever I suppose?’ he added, with an ill-assumed carelessness.

  All through the journey from London — while the heavy old coach rolled along at a rate that seemed a snail’s pace to Captain Bywater’s impatience — one image had been shining before the eyes of the traveller, a fair girlish face, radiant with youthful bloom. It had been almost a child’s face, when he withdrew his eyes from its fresh beauty, five years ago, after the long lingering gaze of farewell, a sweet face looking up at him in its artless grief, half drowned in tears. To have spoken of his love then would have seemed profanation. He kept his secret, and went away to sea, meaning to come back in a couple of years, or so, and plead his cause, fearing no rival in that unsophisticated village, and secure in the belief that Helen Leeworthy cared more for him than any one else in the world.

  A troubled look came over the innkeeper’s round face.

  ‘Sure to goodness, Captain, you must have heard.’

  ‘What? Is she married?

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Dead!’ gasped Captain Bywater, with an ashy face.

  Oh, he ought to have feared this. Fate is so cruel. And beings as lovely as Helen Leeworthy are the flowers which tall earliest under death’s sickle.

  ‘No, sir, not dead — not that any one knows — but gone.’

  ‘Gone! Where and how?’

  ‘That’s more than anybody has ever been able to find out, sir. It almost broke old Mr. Leeworthy’s heart. He has never been the same man since. He just crawls about the place like the ghost of himself. It’s pitiful to see him. His mind is gone. And everything is neglected — the garden — the house — nobody cares.’

  ‘Tell me all — from first to last,’ said Captain Bywater, putting his arm through, the landlord’s and leading him away from the inn door to the broad high road, where there was no one to overhear them. ‘ When did it happen? How? When did she go away? Begin at the beginning.’

  ‘Well, sir, it was two years after you left us, and summer weather, as it might be now, only a good deal later in the year. Old Mr. Leeworthy’s nephew, the politician, him as you’ve doubtless heard about taking a leading part in public affairs up in London, he was staying at the Grange when it happened, with his secretary. They’d been there above a month — nigh upon two months I should say, counting from the closing of Parliament, and Mr. Leeworthy — I mean Mr. Thomas Leeworthy, the nephew — was studying hard, and getting up — stat — stat — well I’m bothered.’

  ‘Statistics,’ exclaimed the Captain impatiently. ‘For Heaven’s sake go on. What does Mr. Leeworthy’s book matter?’

  ‘Well, it has a bearing on the case, you see, sir. All things have a bearing. Well, sir, to make a long story short, one fine September morning, when the leaves were just beginning to turn, Miss Leeworthy was missing. There was no letter — not a word — nothing — to tell anybody where she had gone, or why she had gone. There was nothing missing out of her room — not so much as a bonnet. But she was gone, and from that hour to this nobody in Clerevale has ever heard of her.’

  ‘The secretary,’ cried Captain Bywater. ‘ What of him? He was young, attractive, perhaps.’

  ‘He was young,’ asserted the landlord, ‘but he wasn’t attractive, least ways, not to me. I’d have gone a mile out of my way to avoid meeting him.’

  ‘A lady may have thought differently,’ said the Captain bitterly.

  ‘He saw in this young secretary the clue to the mystery. Lover’s secrets closely kept, an elopement, first Gretna and then the King’s Bench.

  ‘Any how, Captain, the secretary could hardly have been at the bottom of it. He never budged. His master stopped at the Grange till the end of the year, and he stopped with him. I used to meet him about the village, though I didn’t want to it. A lonesome young man, shut up in his own self, as close as a church on work-a-days. I never liked the cut of his jib, as you naval gentlemen say.’

  ‘Is that all you can tell me, Jarvis?’

  ‘Every syllable.’

  The Captain turned from him without a word, and walked quickly back to the village green, and across the green to the gates of the Grange. That gray and rigid face told of a grief too deep for utterance, a dumb despair deep enough to overshadow a life time.

  As he drew near the broad iron gate, a sigh of agony broke from those white lips
of his. Oh, Heaven, how well he remembered her. It was here, by this gate, they had parted. Could it be for ever? He could see the childish face, pure as a lily, the sweet sad eyes, brimming over with tears. And she was gone — perhaps to misery — it might be to shame. Oh, rather than that let it be death. In time, doubtless, he might come to think, with resignation, of her lying at rest in some quiet churchyard. But it was madness to think of her disgraced and dishonoured; that fair flower, which he had deemed almost too lovely for earth, trampled in the gutter, flung aside to wither, like the vilest weed. He went in at the open gate, along the grass grown walk to the low door where he had been used to enter. He rang a bell that sounded dismally, as in an empty house.

  The old housekeeper opened the door. She curtseyed and smiled and seemed pleased to see him. It struck him all at once that he might learn more from her than from the master of the house. She was Mr. Leeworthy’s junior by a good many years. Her memory would be clearer, and he could question her more freely.

  ‘I have come to see your old master, Mrs. Dill; but I should like to have a few minutes’ talk with you first. I’ve only just come home from sea, and I’ve heard something that has taken all the joy out of my return.

  ‘I think I know what you mean, sir. You’ve heard about Miss Helen. She was always a favourite with you, wasn’t she? You were like a playfellow with her, though you were so much older. She loved you like a brother.’

  ‘And I loved her as I never have loved and never shall love any other woman,’ answered the Captain. ‘I tell you my secret, Mrs. Dill, because I want you to speak freely. I want you to help me to find her.’

  ‘Find her,’ sighed the housekeeper. ‘ Oh, sir, who can hope for that, after five long years, and after Mr, Thomas Leeworthy doing all that could be done, and he a public man too, and so clever. Who could do more than he could?’

  ‘Love, my good soul, true love, which is as strong as faith, and can move mountains. Mr. Thomas Leeworthy may have been a very affectionate uncle, but he never loved his niece as I love — yes, as I love her. Living or dead — lost or found — she is to me the dearest thing upon earth. And now tell me every circumstance of her disappearance — every suspicion — every conjecture.’