“Thank Heaven!” exclaimed the dying man, “that sin is off my soul. Natalie, dear wife, farewell! Forgive—forgive all.”
These were the last words he uttered; the priest, who had been summoned in haste, held up the cross before his failing sight; a few strong convulsions shook the poor bruised and mangled frame; and then all was still.
Levison’s Victim
M. E. BRADDON
Critically savaged, the first novel by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1837–1915), Lady Audley’s Secret (1862), went through eight printings in the first three months after publication and went on to become one of the bestselling books of the nineteenth century. It contains the elements of crime, romance, and melodrama that characterize the eighty books that she produced over the next half century. Many of her books were published anonymously or under the nom de plume of Babington White.
When she was twenty-three, she met the Irish publisher John Maxwell and fell in love with him, bearing six of his children. They lived scandalously because he was married to a woman confined to an asylum and it was only after her death that they could marry. Her notorious first novel was her response to the gossip her relationship provoked.
Although the stories she wrote were highly melodramatic, she had literary aspirations and was among the handful of Victorian-era authors, along with Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, and Edgar Allan Poe, to develop the mystery into an acceptable literary form as her characters were fully and realistically developed with psychological depth.
Some fellow authors of the era were aficionados of her work; among them Alfred Lord Tennyson, W. M. Thackeray, Robert Louis Stevenson, J. M. Barrie, Henry James, Charles Reade, and Charles Dickens.
“Levison’s Victim” was originally published in the January 1870 issue of Belgravia; it was first collected in Weavers and Weft, and Other Tales (London, John Maxwell, 1877).
LEVISON’S VICTIM
M. E. Braddon
“Have you seen Horace Wynward?”
“No. You don’t mean to say that he is here?”
“He is indeed. I saw him last night; and I think I never saw a man so much changed in so short a time.”
“For the worse?”
“Infinitely for the worse. I should scarcely have recognised him but for that peculiar look in his eyes, which I dare say you remember.”
“Yes; deep-set gray eyes, with an earnest penetrating look that seems to read one’s most hidden thoughts. I’m very sorry to hear of this change in him. We were at Oxford together, you know; and his place is near my father’s in Buckinghamshire. We have been fast friends for a long time; but I lost sight of him about two years ago, before I went on my Spanish rambles, and I’ve heard nothing of him since. Do you think he has been leading a dissipated life—going the pace a little too violently?”
“I don’t know what he has been doing; but I fancy he must have been travelling during the last year or two, for I’ve never come across him in London.”
“Did you speak to him last night?”
“No; I wanted very much to get hold of him for a few minutes’ chat, but couldn’t manage it. It was in one of the gambling-rooms I saw him, on the opposite side of the table. The room was crowded. He was standing looking on at the game over the heads of the players. You know how tall he is, and what a conspicuous figure anywhere. I saw him one minute, and in the next he had disappeared. I left the rooms in search of him, but he was not to be seen anywhere.”
“I shall try and hunt him up to-morrow. He must be stopping at one of the hotels. There can’t be much difficulty in finding him.”
The speakers were two young Englishmen; the scene a lamp-lit grove of trees outside the Kursaal of a German spa. The elder, George Theobald, was a barrister of the Inner Temple; the younger, Francis Lorrimore, was the son and heir of a Buckinghamshire squire, and a gentlemen at large.
“What was the change that struck you so painfully, George?” Lorrimore asked between the puffs of his cigar; “you couldn’t have seen much of Wynward in that look across the gaming-table.”
“I saw quite enough. His face has a worn, haggard expression, he looks like a man who never sleeps; and there’s a fierceness about the eyes—a contraction of the brows, a kind of restless searching look—as if he were on the watch for someone or something. In short, the poor fellow seemed to me altogether queer—the sort of man one would expect to hear of as being shut up in a madhouse, or committing suicide, or something bad of that kind.”
“I shall certainly hunt him out, George.”
“It would be only a kindness to do so, old fellow, as you and he have been intimate. Stay!” exclaimed Mr. Theobald, pointing suddenly to a figure in the distance. “Do you see that tall man under the trees yonder? I’ve a notion it’s the very man we’re talking of.”
They rose from the bench on which they had been sitting smoking their cigars for the last half-hour, and walked in the direction of the tall figure pacing slowly under the pine trees. There was no mistaking that muscular frame—six-feet-two, if an inch—and the peculiar carriage of the head. Frank Lorrimore touched his friend lightly on the shoulder, and he turned round suddenly and faced the two young men, staring at them blankly, without a sign of recognition.
Yes, it was indeed a haggard face, with a latent fierceness in the deep-set gray eyes overshadowed by strongly marked black brows, but a face which, seen at its best, must needs have been very handsome.
“Wynward,” said Frank, “don’t you know me?”
Lorrimore held out both his hands. Wynward took one of them slowly, looking at him like a man suddenly awakened from sleep.
“Yes,” he said, “I know you well enough now, Frank, but you startled me just this moment. I was thinking. How well you’re looking old fellow! What, you here too, Theobald?”
“Yes, I saw you in the rooms last night,” answered Theobald as they shook hands; “but you were gone before I could get a chance of speaking to you. Where are you staying?”
“At the Hotel des Etrangers. I shall be off to-morrow.”
“Don’t run away in such a hurry, Horace,” said Frank; “it looks as if you wanted to cut us.”
“I’m not very good company just now; you’d scarcely care to see much of me.”
“You are not looking very well, Horace, certainly. Have you been ill?”
“No, I am never ill; I am made of iron, you know.”
“But there’s something wrong, I’m afraid.”
“There is something wrong, but nothing that sympathy or friendship can mend.”
“Don’t say that, my dear fellow. Come to breakfast with me to-morrow, and tell me your troubles.”
“It’s a common story enough; I shall only bore you.”
“I think you ought to know me better than that.”
“Well, I’ll come if you like,” Horace Wynward answered in a softer tone; “I’m not very much given to confide in friendship, but you were once a kind of younger brother of mine, Frank. Yes, I’ll come. How long have you been here?”
“I only came yesterday. I am at the Couronne d’Or, where I discovered my friend Theobald, happily for me, at the table d’hôte. I am going back to Buckinghamshire next week. Have you been at Crofton lately?”
“No; Crofton has been shut up for the last two years. The old housekeeper is there, of course, and there are men to keep the gardens in order. I shouldn’t like the idea of my mother’s flower-garden being neglected; but I doubt if I shall ever live at Crofton.”
“Not when you marry, Horace?”
“Marry? Yes, when that event occurs I may change my mind,” he answered, with a scornful laugh.
“Ah, Horace, I see there is a woman at the bottom of your trouble!”
Wynward took no notice of this remark, and began to talk of indifferent subjects.
The three young men walked for some time under th
e pines, smoking and talking in a fragmentary manner. Horace Wynward had an absent-minded way, which was not calculated to promote a lively style of conversation; but the others indulged his humour, and did not demand much from him. It was late when they shook hands and separated.
“At ten o’clock to-morrow, Horace?” said Frank.
“I shall be with you at ten. Good night.”
Mr. Lorrimore ordered an excellent breakfast, and a little before ten o’clock awaited his friend in a pretty sitting-room overlooking the gardens of the hotel. He had been dreaming of Horace all night, and was thinking of him as he walked up and down the room waiting his arrival. As the little clock on the mantelpiece struck the hour, Mr. Wynward was announced. His clothes were dusty, and he had a tired look even at that early hour. Frank welcomed him heartily.
“You look as if you had been walking, Horace,” he said, as they sat down to breakfast.
“I have been on the hills since five o’clock this morning.”
“So early?”
“Yes, I am a bad sleeper. It is better to walk than to lie tossing about hour after hour, thinking the same thoughts, with maddening repetition.”
“My dear boy, you will make yourself ill with this kind of life.”
“Don’t I tell you that I am never ill? I never had a day’s illness in my life. I suppose when I die I shall go down at a shot—apoplexy or heart disease. Men of my build generally do.”
“I hope you may have a long life.”
“Yes, a long life of emptiness.”
“Why shouldn’t it be a useful, happy life, Horace?”
“Because it was shipwrecked two years ago. I set sail for a given port, Frank, with a fair wind in my favour; and my ship went down in sight of land, on a summer’s day, without a moment’s warning. I can’t rig another boat, and make for another harbour, as some men can. All my world’s wealth was adventured in this one argosy. That sounds tall talk, doesn’t it? But you see there is such a thing as passion in the world, and I’ve so much faith in your sympathy that I’m not ashamed to tell you what a fool I have been, and still am. You were such a romantic fellow five years ago, Frank, and I used to laugh at your sentimental notions.”
“Yes, I was obliged to stand a good deal of ridicule from you.”
“Let those laugh who win. It was in my last long vacation that I went to read at a quiet little village on the Sussex coast, with a retired tutor, an eccentric old fellow, but a miracle of learning. He had three daughters, the eldest of them, to my mind, the loveliest girl that ever the sun shone upon. I’m not going to make a long story of it. I think it was a case of love at sight. I know that before I had been a week in the humdrum sea-coast village, I was over head and ears in love with Laura Daventry; and at the end of a month I was happy in the belief that my love was returned. She was the dearest, brightest of girls, with a sunshiny disposition that won her friends in every direction; and a man must have had a dull soul who could have withstood the charm of her society. I was free to make my own choice, rich enough to marry a penniless girl; and before I went back to Oxford I made her an offer. It was accepted, and I returned to the University the happiest of men.”
He drank a cup of coffee, and rose from the table to walk up and down the room.
“Frank, you would imagine that nothing could arise to interfere with our happiness after this. In worldly circumstances I was what would be considered an excellent match for Miss Daventry, and I had every reason to believe that she loved me. She was very young, not quite eighteen; and I was the first man who had ever proposed to her. I left her, with the most entire confidence in her good faith; and to this hour I believe in her.”
There was a pause, and then he went on again.
“We corresponded, of course. Laura’s letters were charming; and I had no greater delight than in receiving and replying to them. I had promised her to work hard for my degree, and for her sake I kept my promise, and won it. My first thought was to carry her the news of my success; and directly the examinations were over I ran down to Sussex. I found the cottage empty. Mr. Daventry was in London; the two younger girls had gone to Devonshire, to an aunt who kept a school there. About Miss Daventry the neighbours could give me no positive information. She had left a few days before her father, but no one knew where she had gone. When I pressed them more closely they told me that it was rumoured in the village that she had gone away to be married. A gentleman from the Spanish colonies, a Mr. Levison, had been staying at the cottage for some weeks, and had disappeared about the same time as Miss Laura.”
“And you believed that she had eloped with him?”
“To this day I am ignorant as to the manner of her leaving. Her last letters were only a week old. She had told me of this Mr. Levison’s residence in their household. He was a wealthy merchant, a distant relation of her father’s, and was staying in Sussex for his health. This was all she had said of him. Of their approaching departure she had not given me the slightest hint. No one in the village could tell me Mr. Daventry’s London address. The cottage, a furnished one, had been given up to the landlord, and every debt paid. I went to the post office, but the people there had received no direction as to the forwarding of letters, nor had any come as yet for Mr. Daventry.”
“The girls in Devonshire—you applied to them, I suppose?”
“I did; but they could tell me nothing. I wrote to Emily, the elder girl, begging her to send me her sister’s address. She answered my letter immediately. Laura had left home with her father’s full knowledge and consent, she said, but had not told her sisters where she was going. She had seemed very unhappy. The whole affair had been sudden, and her father had also appeared much distressed in mind. This was all I could ascertain. I put an advertisement in the Times, addressed to Mr. Daventry, begging him to let me know his whereabouts; but nothing came of it. I employed a man to hunt London for him, and hunted myself, but without avail. I wasted months in this futile search, now on one false track, now on another.”
“And you have long ago given up all hope, I suppose?” I said, as he paused, walking up and down the room with a moody face.
“Given up all hope of seeing Laura Levison alive? Yes; but not of tracking her destroyer.”
“Laura Levison! Then you think she married the Spanish merchant?”
“I am sure of it. I had been more than six months on the lookout for Mr. Daventry, and had begun to despair of finding him, when the man I employed came to me and told me that he had found the registry of a marriage between Michael Levison and Laura Daventry at an obscure church in the City, where he had occasion to make researches for another client. The date of the marriage was within a few days of Laura’s departure from Sussex.”
“Strange!”
“Yes, strange that a woman could be so fickle, you would say. I felt convinced that there had been something more than girlish inconstancy at work in this business—some motive power strong enough to induce this girl to sacrifice herself in a loveless marriage. I was confirmed in this belief when, within a very short time of the discovery of the registry, I came suddenly upon old Daventry in the street. He would willingly have avoided me; but I insisted on a conversation with him, and he reluctantly allowed me to accompany him to his lodging, a wretched place in Southwark. He was very ill, with the stamp of death upon his face, and had a craven look that convinced me it was to him I was indebted for my sorrow. I told him that I knew of his daughter’s marriage, when and where it had taken place, and boldly accused him of having brought it about.”
“How did he take your accusation?”
“Like a beaten hound. He whimpered piteously, and told me that the marriage had been no wish of his. But Levison had possession of secrets which made him the veriest slave. Little by little I wrung from him the nature of these secrets. They related to forged bills of exchange, in which the old man had made free with his kinsman’s name. It
was a transaction of many years ago; but Levison had used this power in order to induce Laura to marry him; and the girl, to save her father from disgrace and ruin, as she believed, had consented to become his wife. Levison had promised to do great things for the old man; but had left England immediately after his marriage, without settling a shilling on his father-in-law. It was altogether a dastardly business: the girl had been sacrificed to her father’s weakness and folly. I asked him why he had not appealed to me, who could no doubt have extricated him from his difficulty; but he could give me no clear answer. He evidently had an overpowering dread of Michael Levison. I left him, utterly disgusted with his imbecility and selfishness; but, for Laura’s sake, I took care that he wanted for nothing during the remainder of his life. He did not trouble me long.”
“And Mrs. Levison?”
“The old man told me that the Levisons had gone to Switzerland. I followed post-haste, and traced them from place to place, closely questioning the people at all the hotels. The accounts I heard were by no means encouraging. The lady did not seem happy. The gentleman looked old enough to be her father, and was peevish and fretful in his manner, never letting his wife out of his sight, and evidently suffering agonies of jealousy on account of the admiration which her beauty won for her from every one they met. I traced them stage by stage, through Switzerland into Italy, and then suddenly lost the track. I concluded that they had returned to England by some other route; but all my attempts to discover traces of their return were useless. Neither by land nor by sea passage could I hear of the yellow-faced trader and his beautiful young wife. They were not a couple to be overlooked easily; and this puzzled me. Disheartened and dispirited, I halted in Paris, where I spent a couple of months in hopeless idleness—a state of utter stagnation, from which I was aroused abruptly by a communication from my agent, a private detective—a very clever fellow in his way, and well in with the police of civilised Europe. He sent me a cutting from a German newspaper, which described the discovery of a corpse in the Tyrol. It was supposed, from the style of the dress, to be the body of an Englishwoman; but no indication of a name or address had been found, to give a clue to identity. Whether the dead woman had been the victim of foul play, or whether she had met her death from an accidental fall no one had been able to decide. The body had been found at the bottom of a mountain gorge, the face disfigured by the fall from the height above. Had the victim been a native of the district, it might have been easily supposed that she had lost her footing on the mountain path; but that a stranger should have travelled alone by so unfrequented a route seemed highly improbable. The spot at which the body was found lay within a mile of a small village; but it was a place rarely visited by travellers of any description.”
The Big Book of Victorian Mysteries Page 48
