Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  Mrs. Janson turned, and began to descend the stairs. Maria made no effort to shew her out, or to have her shewn out: the courtesies of life were as nothing to her then. She sat down and strove to keep herself from fainting. As she heard her go through the front door, some one appeared to enter it, and footsteps came up the stairs. Was it Mrs. Janson returning? A cold fear was turning Maria’s heart to chillness, and something like a dull sound began to thump in her brain. Not Mrs. Janson. It was Miss Hardisty who entered.

  “You!” exclaimed Mrs. Yorke, glancing sideways at the drawer which contained the hammer, and wishing it was safe in its place. “Church cannot be over!”

  “No. I came out before the sermon. Maria, you look like death. Stay! let me speak to you: I came home to do so. I thought of doing so yesterday, but my courage failed me. What shadow is it that has fallen on the house?”

  “Shadow?” she gasped, “Ay, shadow. I have known you from a child, and I loved and reverenced Mr. Yorke’s mother. I have liked him. For your sake and hers I have resolved to speak. As I went into church — Mr. Yorke was in advance, and I behind with Henry — some people stood in the churchyard. They did not know us, we were strangers, and they continued talking over the marvel of Mr. Yorke’s knowing that the murder was committed before others could know it — for it seems that the neighbourhood trusts Crane, who has been in it all his life, in preference to Mr. Yorke. I spoke a few words to Henry, and we went in. In the commandments, when the clergyman repeated, ‘Thou shalt do no murder,’ and I remembered next to whom I was standing — Maria, don’t scream: suspicion, above all things, must not be courted here, even from your servants. Well, I felt as if I could not remain there by his side, and when the clergyman went out to change his surplice, I left, and came back to you. Let me say to you what I have to say.”

  Mrs. Yorke only bowed her head. She could not speak.

  “Understand, Maria. I assume no one’s guilt or innocence; I ask not what led to that incautious revelation of your husband’s, the premature knowledge of the murder and the manner of its committal; I would rather not know. But that avowal must be remedied.”

  “Remedied!” wailed the unhappy lady, in a tone of despair. “Oh, my children!”

  “There is a remedy, Maria.”

  “How?”

  “I and Henry Yorke must give false testimony,” continued Miss Hardisty, in a slow, distinct whisper. “Your husband also; but to him the speaking falsely will probably be of no moment. Henry, as he came through the village on his way to us that night, saw the crowd gathered round Mr. Janson’s house; and the murder, as we have heard since, was then discovered. He must have heard the details; must have mixed with the crowd and heard them; and he brought the news to us. Do you understand?”

  “But he did not,” said Mrs. Yorke, less quick of comprehension than she would have been at a more tranquil moment.

  “No; but he must say he did; and swear to it, if necessary. I am also prepared to do so — that is, that I heard him tell the tale when he came in. I am not insensible to the disgrace and danger — let us not allude to the guilt — of taking a false oath,” added Miss Hardisty, her voice growing harsh, and her brow contracting, “but it may save disgrace, the most frightful that can be inflicted on man, from falling on Mr. Yorke, and consequently upon you and your children. We must have been under a mistake you know; Mr. Yorke must have confounded the words spoken by Crane with the account afterwards brought in by Henry Yorke; and thus the mistake must be explained away. Do you not understand now, Maria?”

  “Yes — yes,” she replied. “O Olivia,” she continued with a shudder, “this is a horrible affliction!”

  “Do not speak of it to me,” hastily interrupted Miss Hardisty. “I know that you are innocent, and I would rather not know more. I wish I could have saved you from it, more effectually than I am now trying to save you from its consequences.”

  “But about Henry?” whispered Mrs. Yorke. “Henry will be found all right. The boy’s doubts were excited before mine. Did you notice his countenance on Friday, when Crane and Squire Hipgrave were here? He is even more alive to the dread and the danger than I; and this plan is as much his as mine, for he met me half-way in it. There is no fear of Henry: deep feeling and sound sense lie under his random manner. Do you suggest this course to your husband, and be assured of us. Fortunately, fortunately, Mr. Yorke did not speak while Finch was in the room telling of Mr. Louth’s murder, and none of the servants know but what Henry Yorke did bring the news of Mr. Janson’s.”

  In the most intense pain, both of mind and body, — for the headache, only put forth as a plea in the morning, had come on with violence, — Mrs. Yorke had retired to bed before the family got home from church.

  Not to her own bed: to a small curtainless bed in the room of Leopold, which had been placed there for a nurse’s use temporarily, during the boy’s illness. She cared not for the comments of the servants, but went up there. And yet her excuse to Finch proved that she did care; for when Finch, in surprise, volubly demanded why her mistress had not lain down in her own room, she answered that she was here more out of the way of hearing the noise of the house. Maria said the same to Mr. Yorke, when he came up and questioned her.

  Miss Hardisty had said, “Suggest this course to your husband.” How was she to do it? If ever woman shrunk from a topic, Maria shrunk from that. The very breathing of it to her husband seemed as if it would cost her her life.

  All day she lay dwelling upon it. How should she speak? how let him know that her suspicions were awakened? In the dusk of the evening Mr. Yorke again came up.

  “Are you no better, Maria?”

  “I think I am worse,” she answered.

  “You would be more comfortable in your own bed.”

  “It is quieter here. Do not stay. It must be your dinner-time.”

  He bent to kiss her cheek. With a wail of pain, she turned her head away, and buried it in the pillow. Mr. Yorke bent over her, whispering softly —

  “What strange idea have you been getting into your head? It is a wrong one.”

  Speaking the words with marked emphasis, he quitted the room. Maria, in the course of the evening, called for Miss Hardisty.

  “You must speak to him yourself, Olivia,” she said. “You must arrange all with him. I cannot.”

  “It may be better that I should,” quietly replied Miss Hardisty. “It is so essential that he should understand exactly what I and Henry shall have to say.”

  CHAPTER XV.

  The Double Inquest.

  MONDAY morning brought all the bustle of the double inquest. It was held at a public-house in the village. The proceedings in Mr. Louth’s case were soon over; and then came on Mr. Janson’s. The woman-servant spoke to the finding of the body; the doctors, to the cause of death — the unfortunate blow behind the ear. Mrs. Yorke, looking white as a sheet, trembling inwardly and outwardly, told of Mr. Janson’s visit to her that afternoon; and Mr. Yorke’s butler was called to prove the hour of his departure from the cottage. It was striking five by the hall clock, he said, as he led Mr. Janson out. At the conclusion of Mrs. Yorke’s testimony, she was conducted to her carriage, which was in waiting, and driven home.

  Next came Henry Yorke. He had seen the bustle round Mr. Janson’s door in passing through the village that night, he said; had heard that Mr. Janson was murdered, and had told the news when he got to Alnwick Cottage. Miss Hardisty corroborated it. She was present with Mr. and Mrs. Yorke, when Henry Yorke entered and mentioned it. Squire Hipgrave observed to Miss Hardisty, that she had not spoken of this the following morning; she had said it was Mr. Yorke who first spoke about Janson. It was not impossible, Miss Hardisty equably answered; what with the double murder, the horror of the affair, and the mixed-up reports, her mind was in a mass of confusion. Mr. Yorke was next called. He confirmed Henry Yorke’s assertion as to his bringing the news of Mr. Janson’s murder, and added that he supposed it related to the murder spoken of by Crane the gardener.
Hence the confusion and mistake.

  “Do you know you have greatly relieved all our minds?” cried Squire Hipgrave, linking his arm within Mr. Yorke’s as they, and several more gentlemen, came forth at the conclusion of the inquiry. “It was so singular a thing that you, or Crane — whichever it might have been — should know of the murder, in that strange way, without being able to say whence you heard of it. In short, I may say, a suspicious thing.”

  “The fact is this,” said Mr. Yorke confidentially, “though I did not choose to proclaim it before the coroner, I was half-seas over that night, and had a somewhat confused remembrance of what passed. Your good salt beef at luncheon, squire, made me drink like a fish; and, not satisfied with that, I must make my dinner, in the evening, chiefly of drink, for my appetite had gone, but the thirst remained. When I went in, I did not speak of what Crane and his wife had told me, — murder is not a topic to frighten women with, — and after dinner I dropped asleep. Next came in Finch with her tale, which, as the woman truly says, I heard, and did not contradict, and next came in Henry Yorke, with the history of Mr. Janson’s murder. What more natural than that I — in the state I was — confounded the one with the other, and assumed that both accounts related to the same — to Janson? Thus it happened. And had it not been for Miss Hardisty and Henry Yorke, who, when you and Crane left on Friday morning, began to think over matters, and strove to set me right, I should have persisted in my own story for ever.”

  “Well, any way, I am glad it is cleared up.”

  “That’s an intelligent youth, that relation of yours,” said Mr. Maskell. “How well he gave his testimony to-day!”

  “A superior lad,” remarked Mr. Yorke. “Is it quite certain that the murderers of Louth and poor Janson were not the same?”

  “I don’t see that it was possible. Of the same gang they may have been, but the same individuals, no. A very disagreeable thing for Mrs. Yorke to have been obliged to attend the inquest,” added Mr. Maskell. “But, you see, she was the last person, so far as we have heard, who saw Janson alive.”

  “Yes; no wonder she was nervous. There is some idea afloat of Janson’s friends here subscribing together, and offering a reward for the apprehension of the murderers, is there not?” continued Mr. Yorke. “We were talking of it,” replied Squire Hipgrave. “I should wish to contribute my share,” said Mr. Yorke. “The sooner the murderers are discovered, the more satisfactory it will be for the neighbourhood. Shameful so to upset a peaceful community! It has had such an effect upon my household, especially on Mrs. Yorke, that I do not think we shall remain. I tell them that because two men were killed in one night, it is no reason for supposing they are going to be killed; but their fears are aroused, and I can make no impression. However, stop or go, I will be one of the first to join in offering a reward. Mr. Maskell, have the goodness to put my name down for —

  What sum are the rest going to contribute?” broke off Mr. Yorke.

  “We were thinking of five pounds each. There will be ten of us, or so, which will bring it up to fifty pounds.”

  “Fifty pounds!” somewhat contemptuously ejaculated Mr. Yorke. “I do not think that sum will do much good.”

  “Shall I add your name, sir!” asked Mr. Maskell.

  “Yes. For a thousand pounds!”

  The reply was spoken quietly, but those around were startled at the magnitude of the sum. What had Edward Janson been to Mr. Yorke that he should offer it?

  “I would freely give it to bring the murderer to light,” resumed Mr. Yorke, as if he had divined their thoughts.

  Mr. Yorke went home. Mrs. Yorke was alone in the drawing-room as he entered, and she motioned to him to close the door. “Now,” said she, “what is to be your course?”

  “My course!” repeated Mr. Yorke, with a keen gaze at her pale, resolute face.

  “Spare me from entering into details,” she said. “It is enough for me to say, that I know who was the destroyer of Janson.”

  “You do not,” rejoined Mr. Yorke.

  “He is known to me, to Olivia Hardisty, and to Henry. Their testimony of this day might prove it to you. I have seen the proofs of the crime.”

  “The proofs!” repeated Mr. Yorke.

  “Yes,” she answered, looking down. “The washed-out clothes and the broken gun.”

  A very angry expression escaped his lips. “Who has dared to become a spy upon me?”

  “I have,” she replied. “I stove in the back of the bureau. Let it pass; there is no time to waste words. Henceforward I am not your wife, Mr. Yorke; no, nor your friend; but your deadly enemy. But for the name my children bear, I would deliver you up to justice. The same place can no longer hold us both, and you must leave this.”

  “Not at your bidding,” returned Mr. Yorke. “I have business in London, and shall proceed thither to-day.”

  “Go where you will, stay where you will, so that it be not England,” she impetuously rejoined. “You may enjoy the half of your property for your life, the remainder must be secured to me. Without my children, I would not touch a stiver of it; but they must be properly reared.”

  “Upon my word, Maria, you carry things with a high hand.”

  “I do,” she answered, beginning to tremble. “You have put yourself into my power, and I must make my own terms. If ever you attempt to inhabit the same house with me and your children again, I shall have no resource but to proclaim the truth.”

  “You talk coolly of separation! Some wives would feel a pang at parting with their husbands.”

  She burst into tears. Until that dreadful discovery she would have felt one. “I cannot help myself,” she wailed. “You have made my future a course of abject terror, shame, misery; you have entailed infamy on your children.”

  “Softly, if you please. I have not done this.”

  She lifted her hand with a passionate gesture, as if she demanded silence. “Saxonbury must be mine,” she said, after a pause. “It is well that my father’s grandchildren should be reared in it.”

  “Quite well. Will you go back to it at once, or wait here until the end of the term that the cottage was taken for?”

  She doubted his good faith, he spoke so readily. “I will go back to it,” she answered. “But I can make all these arrangements for myself when you have left. You can bid farewell to your children before you start; a farewell that must last you for ever.”

  “About the ‘for ever’ we shall see,” replied Mr. Yorke, speaking with some irony. “You speak coolly, I say, of separation. Possibly it is what you have been contemplating?”

  “Until now, the separating from you would have been the greatest grievance that life could have brought,” she wailed. “I had grown to love you. Yes, Arthur, let me say it in this our last hour, if our marriage had been productive of nothing else, it had brought out my love for you. No, touch me not,” she cried, retreating, as he would have taken her hand. “It is ended, and you have been the one to put a barrier between us. You shall never touch so much as my hand again. Yours is red.”

  His wife, whom he had so loved! The signs of deep emotion — emotion which she could not understand — arose to Mr. Yorke’s countenance. Was he feeling that he had no resource but to become an exile, out of regard to his own hoped-for safety? Had the awful fact already stamped itself on his brain, that a murderer is never safe, go where he will? that the wings of pursuit seem flying after him for ever? But for that wretched, premature avowal, suspicion would not have pointed to him? What madness possessed him to make it?

  “I have offered a thousand pounds for the discovery of the murderer,” said he, in a cold hard tone to Maria.

  She lifted her hands again, as if she would beat these mocking words off. He went up to her.

  “One kiss, Maria, before I go.”

  And, in spite of her resistance, of her shrinking dread of being embraced by one who had become so great a criminal, Mr. Yorke, in his strength, folded her face to his, and kissed it passionately.

  He le
ft the house at dusk, to become a fugitive, as his wife verily believed, on the face of the earth. She fell on a chair after she had watched him away. The excitement which had buoyed her up throughout the day was subsiding now.

  The sharers in the fatal secret — Miss Hardisty and Henry — hastened to her. They also had been watching the departure.

  “He is gone for ever,” she murmured to them. “I pray you let this dreadful thing sink into oblivion. Henry, you are but a boy. Are you sure of yourself?”

  “Maria, if I were not sure of myself, I should never have undertaken to save him,” whispered the lad. “Rather than betray Yorke, I would say I did the murder myself; for the sake of you and the children.”

  CHAPTER XVI.

  Fever.

  MRS. YORKE’S intention had been to leave Alnwick Cottage forthwith for Saxonbury. The very neighbourhood had become hateful to her. If she could have left it the night that witnessed the departure of Mr. Yorke, she would have done so. Preparations, however, had to be made, orders given, notice to people in Offord to send in their accounts, notice to be given to Saxonbury of their arrival. Maria would have left all arrangements undone, have confided to an agent the settling of affairs, but that she feared her hasty removal, following on that of Mr. Yorke’s, might excite suspicion. Terrible fears were at work within her.

  And, what with the fears to come, and the horror she had passed through; what with the awful ending to her love and her wedded life, for she really had grown to love and esteem her husband; before those preparations were completed, and the day of departure had come, Maria Yorke was stricken with fever. Almost a brain fever.

  It was all Olivia Hardisty’s care to keep people from the room. She knew not what Maria might give vent to in her ravings. Constituting herself chief nurse, she barred the door to all save the doctors and Finch. Finch had to be admitted occasionally; there was no help for it — the doctors of course. No longer Mr. Janson. He, poor fellow, would never more attend any; never more, never more. The gentleman who had temporarily taken charge of his patients came to Mrs. Yorke, with a physician from a distance. They could not think what could have brought on brain fever.