A WITNESS FROM THE GRAVE.
THE two girls at the Water House lived their solitary life all through
the dark week before Christmas. They read a great deal; Bella confining
herself to the novels from the Great Yafford library, Beatrix reading
those books which she believed were to fit her for companionship with
Cyril Culverhouse in the days to come. They did not find so much to say
to each other as friends of such long standing might have been expected
to find. But Beatrix was by nature reserved about those things nearest
her heart, and her cloistered life gave her little else to talk about.
On the dusky winter afternoons they went up to the lumber-room, and had
a feast of music at the old piano; Bella singing prettily in a clear
soprano voice--thin but not unmelodious--Beatrix playing church music
with the touch of a player in whom music was a natural expression of
thought and feeling, and not a laboriously acquired art. Very rarely
could Beatrix be persuaded to sing, but when she did uplift her fresh
young voice, the rich contralto tones were like the sound of an organ,
and even Bella’s shallow soul was moved by the simple melodies of the
Psalter of those days.
‘As pants the hart for cooling streams,
When heated in the chase.’
Or,
‘With one consent let all the earth
To God their cheerful voices raise.’
‘Has Mr. Culverhouse ever heard you sing?’ inquired Bella.
‘Never. Where should he hear me? I never sing anywhere but in this
room.’
‘And in church.’
‘Yes, of course, in church. But I do not think even Cyril could
distinguish my voice out of a whole congregation.’
‘He might,’ said Bella, ‘all the rest sing through their noses.’
For fine days there was the garden, and for variety Puck and the pony
carriage. Miss Harefield took her friend for long drives across the
moor. Once they met Cyril in one of the lanes, and passed him with a
distant recognition. Bella saw Beatrix’s cheek grow pale as he came in
sight.
‘How white you turned just now,’ she said, when Puck had carried them
ever so far away from the curate of Little Yafford.
‘Did I?’ asked Beatrix. ‘I don’t think I can be as pale as you. That
was sympathy, I suppose. You felt how hard it was for me to pass him
by.’
‘Yes,’ answered Bella in her quiet little way, ‘that was what I felt.’
Bella had been staying at the Water House a week and during that time
had seen Mr. Harefield about half a dozen times. He was in the habit
of dining with his daughter and her governess on Sundays. It was not a
pleasant change in his hermit-like life, but he made this sacrifice to
paternal duty. Every Sunday at four o’clock he sat down to dinner with
his daughter and Miss Scales. Now that Miss Scales was away he sat down
alone with the two girls, and looked at them curiously, when he found
himself face to face with them at the board, as if they had been a new
species in zoology which he had never before had the opportunity of
scrutinizing.
He looked from one to the other thoughtfully while he unfolded his
napkin, as if he were not quite clear as to which was his daughter, and
then, having made up his mind on that point, addressed himself with a
slight turn of the head to Beatrix.
‘Your friend has grown very much,’ he said.
‘Do you really think so, Mr. Harefield?’ inquired Bella, with a
gratified simper. It was something to be spoken of in any wise by this
modern Timon.
Mr. Harefield went on helping the soup without a word. He had quite
forgotten his own remark, and had not heard Bella’s. They got half-way
through the dinner in absolute silence. Then a tart and a pudding
appeared, and the tart, being set down rather suddenly before Mr.
Harefield, seemed to disturb him in the midst of a waking dream.
‘Have you heard from Miss Scales?’ he asked his daughter abruptly.
‘Yes, papa. I have had two letters. Her aunt is very ill. Miss Scales
is afraid she will die.’
‘She hopes it, you mean. Can you suppose such a sensible person as Miss
Scales would wish a tiresome old woman’s life prolonged when she will
get a legacy by her death?’
‘Miss Scales is a good woman, papa. She would not be so wicked as to
wish for any one’s death.’
‘Would she not? I’m afraid there are a great many good people on this
earth wishing as hard as they can in the same line. Expectant heirs,
expectant heiresses--waiting to wrench purse and power from a dead
man’s gripe.’
After this pleasant speech the master of the house relapsed into
silence. The old butler moved quietly to and fro. There was a gentle
jingle of glass and silver now and then, like the ringing of distant
sleigh-bells. The wood ashes fell softly from the wide old grate. The
clock ticked in the hall outside. Time halted like a cripple. Bella
began to think that even a home Sunday--with Mr. Scratchell swearing at
the cooking and Mrs. Scratchell in tears--was better than this. It was
at least open misery, and the storm generally blew over as rapidly as
it arose. Here there was a suppressed and solemn gloom, as of a tempest
always impending and never coming. What a waste of wealth and luxury
it seemed to sit in a fine old room like this, surrounded by all good
things, and to be obstinately wretched!
When dinner was over, and certain dried fruits and pale half-ripened
oranges had been carried round by the butler’s subordinate, the butler
himself following solemnly with decanters and claret jug, and nobody
taking anything, the two girls rose, at a look from Beatrix, and left
Mr. Harefield alone.
‘Will you come up to my room and have some tea, papa?’ Beatrix asked at
the door.
‘Not to-night, my dear. I have a new number of the _Westminster_ to
read. You and Miss Scratchell can amuse yourselves. Good-night.’
No paternal kiss was offered or asked.
‘Good-night, papa,’ said Beatrix, and she and Bella went away.
It was a long evening. Bella did not like to open a novel, and did not
care for Bishop Ken, whose ‘Practice of Divine Love’ formed the last
stage in Miss Harefield’s self-culture. The only piano in the house was
ever so far away in the lumber-room, and the lumber-room after dark was
suggestive of ghosts and goblins, or at any rate of rats and mice.
Sunday evening at the parish church was gayer than this, Bella thought,
as she sat by the fire stifling her frequent yawns, and watched
Beatrix’s thoughtful face bending over Bishop Ken.
‘Yes, she is much handsomer than I am,’ reflected Bella, with a pang
of envy. ‘How can I wonder that he likes her best! She is like one of
those old prints Mr. Dulcimer showed us one evening--by Albert Durer, I
think. Grave dark faces of Saints and Madonnas. She is like a poem or a
picture made alive. And he is full of romance and poetry. No wonder he
loves her. It is not for the sake of her fortune. He really does love
her.’
And then came the question which in Bella’s mind was unanswerable. ‘Why
should she have everything and I so little?’
Beatrix read on, absorbed in her book. The clock ticked, the gray
wood ashes dropped upon the hearth, just as they had done in the
dining-room. Outside the deep casement windows the night winds were
blowing, the ragged tree-tops swaying against a cold gray sky. Bella
shivered as she sat by the fire. This was the dreariest Sunday evening
she had ever spent.
Presently a shrill bell pealed loudly through the house, a startling
sound amidst a silence which seemed to have lasted for ages, nay, to be
a normal condition of one’s existence. Bella gave a little jump, and
sat up in her chair alert and eager.
‘Could it be Cyril Culverhouse? No, of course not.’
His image filled so large a place in her life that even the sudden
ringing of a bell suggested his approach, till reason came to check the
vagaries of fancy.
The same thought darted into Beatrix’s mind. For a woman deeply in
love, earth holds only one man--her lover. Was it Cyril who came to
claim her; to trample down the barrier of paternal authority, and to
claim her by the right of their mutual love? This idea being, at the
first flash of reason, utterly untenable, lasted no longer with Beatrix
than it had done with Bella.
‘It must be Miss Scales,’ she said, going to the door. ‘And yet I
should not have thought she would travel on a Sunday. She is so very
particular about Sunday.’
Miss Scales belonged to a sect with whom God’s day of rest means a day
of penance; a day upon which mankind holds itself in an apologetic
attitude towards its Maker, as if deprecating the Divine wrath for its
audacity in having taken the liberty to be born.
The two girls went out into the corridor, and from the corridor to the
square open gallery in the middle of the house, from which the broad
staircase descended. Here, leaning upon the oaken balustrade, they
looked down into the hall.
It was empty when they first looked, a vacant expanse of black and
white marble. Then there came another peal of the bell, and the butler
walked slowly across to the door, and opened it just wide enough to
reconnoitre the visitor.
Here there was a brief parley, the drift of which the girls could not
distinguish. They only heard a murmur of masculine voices.
‘It can’t be Miss Scales,’ whispered Beatrix. ‘They would have brought
in her portmanteau before this.’
The parley ceased all at once, the butler threw open the door, and a
gentleman came in out of the windy night, bringing a blast of cold air
with him. He took off his hat, and stood in the centre of the hall,
looking about him, while the butler carried his card to Mr. Harefield.
The stranger was a man of about fifty, tall and spare of figure, but
with a certain nobility of bearing, as of one accustomed to command.
The finely shaped head was beautifully set upon the shoulders, the
chest was broad and deep. As he looked upwards the two girls drew back
into the shadow, still watching him.
It was a beautiful head, a grand Italian face full of tranquillity
and power, like a portrait by Moroni. The eyes were dark, the skin
was a pale olive, the hair ‘a sable silvered.’ A thrill went through
Beatrix’s heart as she looked at him.
Yes, she remembered, she knew. This was Antonio. This was the Italian
with the pathetic voice, who sat in the twilight, singing church music,
that summer evening long ago. This was the man whose face memory
associated with the face of her dead mother. She had seen them looking
at her together in those days of early childhood, whose faint memories
are like a reminiscence of some anterior state of being, a world known
before earth.
The butler came back.
‘My master will see you, sir.’
The stranger followed him out of the hall. Beatrix and Bella could hear
the footsteps travelling slowly along the passage to the library.
‘Who can he be?’ exclaimed Miss Scratchell, full of curiosity. ‘Perhaps
he is a relation of your papa’s,’ she added, speculatively, Beatrix
having ignored her first remark.
Beatrix remained silent. She was thinking of the miniature in her
mother’s room, the youthful likeness of the face she had seen to-night.
Who was this man? Her mother’s kinsman, perhaps? But why had his
presence brought sorrow and severance between husband and wife? Little
as she knew of the hard facts that made up the history of her mother’s
life, there was that in Beatrix’s memory which told her this man had
been the cause of evil.
She roused herself with an effort, and went back to her room, followed
by Bella, who had broken out into fresh yawns on finding that the
advent of the stranger promised no relief to the dulness of the evening.
‘Eight o’clock,’ she said, as the old clock in the hall announced that
fact, embellishing a plain truth with a little burst of old-fashioned
melody. ‘They are coming out of church by this time. I wonder whether
Mr. Culverhouse has preached one of his awakening sermons? I am sure
we should be the better for a little awakening, shouldn’t we, Beatrix?
I really wish you would talk a little, dear. You look as if you were
walking in your sleep.’
‘Do I?’ said Beatrix. ‘Here comes the tea-tray. Perhaps a cup of tea
may enliven us.’
‘Well, the urn is company at any rate,’ assented Bella, as the servant
set down the oblong silver tray, with its buff and gold Bristol cups
and saucers, and the massive old urn, dimly suggestive of sisterly
affection in the person of Electra, or needing only a napkin neatly
draped across it to recall the sculptured monuments of a modern
cemetery.
‘Now, really,’ pursued Bella, while Beatrix was making tea, ‘have you
no idea who that foreign-looking gentleman is?’
‘Why should I trouble myself about him? He comes to see papa, not me.’
‘Yes, but one can’t help being curious so long as one is human. By the
time my inquisitiveness is worn out I shall be an angel. Your papa has
so few visitors; and this one has such a distinguished appearance. I
feel sure he is some one of importance.’
‘Very likely.’
‘My dear Beatrix, this lonely life of yours is making you dreadfully
stoical,’ remonstrated Bella.
‘I should be glad to become stoical. This stranger’s visit cannot make
any difference to me. It will not make my father love me any better, or
feel more kindly disposed towards Cyril. It may make him a little worse
perhaps. It may stir up old bitterness.’
‘Why?’ cried Bella, eagerly, her bright blue eyes becoming
unbeauteously round in her excitement.
‘Don’t talk to me about him any more, please, Bella. I do not know who
he is, or what he is, or whence or why he comes. He will go as he came,
no doubt, leaving no trace of his presence behind him.’
But here Beatrix was wrong. This was not to be. In the library the two
men were standing face to face--men who had not met for more than ten
years, who had parted in anger too deep for words.
Christian Harefield contemplated his visitor calmly, or with that stony
quietude which is passion’s best assumption of calm.
‘Has the end of the world come,’ he asked, ‘that you come to me?’
‘You are surprised that I should come?’ responded the Italian, in very
good English.
‘I am surprised at two things--your folly and your audacity.’
‘I shall not praise my own wisdom. I have done a foolish thing,
perhaps, in coming to England on purpose to do you a service. But I
deny the audacity. There is no act in my past life that should forbid
my entrance to this house.’
‘We will not re-open old wounds,’ answered Christian Harefield. ‘You
are a villain; you acted like a villain. You are a coward; you acted
like a coward in flying from the man you had wronged, when he pursued
you in his just and righteous wrath.’
‘My career of the last ten years best answers your charge of
cowardice,’ replied the other. ‘My name will be remembered in Italy
with the five days of Milan. I never fled from you; I never knew that
you pursued me.’
‘I spent half a year of my life in hunting you. I would have given the
remnant of an unprofitable life then to have met you face to face in
your lawless country, as we are meeting to-night in this room. But now
the chance comes too late. I have outlived even the thirst for revenge.’
‘Again I tell you that I never wronged you, unless it was a wrong
against you to enter this house.’
‘It was, and you know it. You, my wife’s former lover--the only man she
ever loved--you to creep into my house, as the serpent crept into Eden,
under the guise of friendship and good-will, and poison my peace for
ever.’
‘It was your own groundless jealousy that made the poison. From first
to last your wife was the purest and noblest of women.’
‘From first to last!’ exclaimed Christian Harefield, with exceeding
bitterness. ‘First, when she introduced you, the lover of her youth, to
her husband’s house, last when she fled from that husband with you for
her companion. Assuredly the purest and noblest among women, judged by
your Italian ethics.’
‘With me!’ cried the Italian, ‘with me! Your wife fled with me! You say
that--say it in good faith.’
‘I say that which I know to be the truth. When she left me that night
at the inn on the mountain road above Borgo Pace, after a quarrel
that had been just a trifle more bitter than our customary quarrels,
you were waiting for her with a carriage a quarter of a mile from the
inn. You were seen there; she was seen to enter the carriage with you.
Tolerably direct evidence, I fancy. For my daughter’s sake--to save my
own pride and honour--I gave out that my wife had died suddenly at that
lonely inn in the Apennines. Her father was dead, her brother sunk in
the gulf of Parisian dissipation. There was no one interested in making
any inquiries as to the details of her death or burial. The fiction
passed unquestioned. For me it was a truth. She died to me in the hour
she abandoned and dishonoured me; and all trust in my fellow-men, all
love for my race, died within me at the same time.’
‘You are a man to be pitied,’ said Antonio, gravely. ‘You have borne
the burden of an imaginary dishonour. You have wronged your wife, you
have wronged me; but you have wronged yourself most of all. Did you get
no letter from the Convent of Santa Cecilia?’
‘What letter? No. I had no letter. I left the inn at daybreak
on the morning after my wife’s flight, followed on the track of
your carriage--traced you as far as Citta di Castello--there lost
you--caught the trail again at Perugia, followed you to Narni, and
there again missed you.’
‘And you believed that your wife was my companion in that journey?’
‘What else should I believe? It was the truth. I heard everywhere that
you were accompanied by a lady--a lady whose description answered to my
wife.’
‘Possibly. A tavern-keeper’s description is somewhat vague. The lady
was my sister, whom I was taking from the convent of the Sacred Heart
at Urbino, where she had been educated, to meet her betrothed in Rome,
where she was to be married. Your wife took refuge at the convent of
Santa Cecilia on the night she left you. My sister and I went there
with her--left her in the charge of the Reverend Mother, who promised
her an asylum there as long as she chose to remain. She was to write
to you immediately, explaining her conduct, and telling you that your
violence had compelled her to this course, and that she could only
return to you under certain conditions. I heard the Reverend Mother
promise that a messenger should be despatched to the inn with the
letter as soon as it was daylight.’
‘I was on the road at the first streak of dawn,’ exclaimed Mr.
Harefield. ‘I never had that letter. How do I know that it is not all
a lie? How do I know that you have not come here with a deep-laid
plot to cheat and cajole me? I have lived all these years believing
my wife false, accursed, abominable, a woman whose very existence was
a disgrace to me and to her child. And you come now with this fable
about a convent--a sudden flight from an intolerable life--ay, it
was bitter enough in those last days, I confess--a pure and spotless
life, cloistered, unknown. She is living still, I suppose--a professed
nun--hiding that calm face under the shadow of a sable hood?’
‘She died within a year of her entrance into the convent, died, as
she had lived, a guest, receiving protection and hospitality from the
sisterhood, among them but not one of them. As your wife the church
could not have received her. The nuns loved her for her gentleness,
her piety, and her sorrow. I have come from her grave. Till within the
last few months I have been a wanderer on the face of my country--every
thought of my brain, every desire of my heart given to the cause of
Italian independence. Only last week I found myself again a traveller
on the mountain road between Urbino and Perugia, and master of my time.
I went to visit the grave of her I had last seen a sorrowful fugitive
from a husband whose very love had been so mixed with bitterness that
it had resulted in mutual misery. The fact that you had never visited
the convent, or communicated in any way with the nuns during all these
years made me suspect some misunderstanding--and in justice to her whom
I loved when life was young and full of fair hopes--and whose memory
I love and honour now my hair is gray, I am here to tell you that
your wife died worthy of your regret, that it is you who have need of
pardon--not she.’
‘And I am to take your word for this?’
‘No, I knew too well your hatred and distrust to come to you without
some confirmation of my story. At my request, knowing all the
circumstances of the case, the Reverend Mother drew up a full account
of your wife’s reception at the convent, her last illness, and her
death, which came unexpectedly though she had long been ill. My chief
purpose in coming to England was to give you this paper.’ He laid a
large sealed envelope upon the table before Mr. Harefield. ‘Having done
this, my mission is ended. I have no more to say.’
The Italian bowed gravely, and left the room, Mr. Harefield
mechanically ringing the bell for the butler to show him out.
The door closed upon the departing guest, and Christian Harefield stood
looking straight before him with fixed eyes--looking into empty air and
seeing--what?
A pale pained face, white to the lips, framed in darkest hair, dark
eyes gazing at him with a strained agonized gaze--hands clasped in a
convulsion of grief and anger.
He heard a voice half choked with sobs.
‘Husband, you are too cruel--groundless accusations--vilest
suspicions--I will not, I cannot bear this persecution any longer. I
will leave you this very night.’
‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘your lover is waiting for you. It was his carriage
that passed us on the road--and _you_ know it.’
‘I do,’ she exclaimed with flashing eyes, ‘and I thank God that I have
a friend and defender so near.’
And then she left him, to go to her own room as he fancied. He took
her talk of flight as an empty threat. She had threatened him in this
same way more than once in her passion. Their quarrel to-night had been
a little more violent than usual. That was all. His jealousy had been
aroused by the sight of a face he hated, looking out of a travelling
carriage that whirled by them in a cloud of white dust on the sunny
mountain road. He had given free rein to his violence afterwards, when
they were alone at the inn--and had spoken words that no woman could
forgive or forget.
Late that night he found her gone, and on inquiry discovered that
a carriage had been seen waiting not far from the inn, and a lady,
muffled in a mantle, had been seen to enter it. He heard this some
hours after the event. He had no clue to assist him in discovering the
way the carriage had taken, but he concluded that it had gone on to
Citta di Castello. He had no doubt as to the face he had seen looking
out of the window, athwart that blinding cloud of dust, as the bells
jingled on the ragged old harness, and the driver lashed his jaded
horses.
The outer door of the Water House shut with a prolonged reverberation,
like the door of an empty church. Antonio was gone. Christian Harefield
sank down in his accustomed seat, and sat staring at the fire, with
hollow eyes, his arms hanging loosely across the oaken arms of the
chair, his long thin hands falling idly, his lips moving faintly, now
and then, but making no sound, as if repeating dumbly some conversation
of the past--the ghosts of words long dead.
Those haggard eyes, which seemed to be staring at the red logs, were
indeed looking along the corridor of slow dull years to that one point
in the past when life was fresh and vivid, and all this earth flushed
with colour and alive with light.
He was thinking of the evening when he first saw the girl who was
afterwards his wife.
It was at a party in Florence--at the house of an Italian
Countess--literary--artistic--dilettante--a party at which the rooms
were crowded, and people went in and out and complained of the heat,
while large and splendid Italian matrons--with eyes that one would
hardly hope to see, save on the canvas of Guido, sat in indolent
grace on the broad crimson divans, languidly fanning themselves, and
murmuring soft scandals under cover of the music. There was much music
at the Countess Circignani’s, and that night a young novice--the
daughter of a Colonel in the Italian army--was led to the piano by
the fair hand of the Countess herself, who entreated silence for her
_protégée_. And then the sweet round voice arose, full of youth and
freshness, in a joyous melody of Rossini’s--an air as full of trills
and bright spontaneous cadences as a skylark’s song.
He, Christian Harefield, the travelling Englishman, stood among the
crowd and watched the fair face of the singer. He was struck with
its beauty and sweetness; but his was not a nature prone to sudden
passions. This was to be no new instance of love kindled by a single
glance, swift as fire from a burning glass. Before the evening was
ended, Mr. Harefield had been presented to Colonel Murano, and by the
Colonel to the fair singer. The soldier was a patriot, burning for the
release of his country from the Austrian yoke--full of grand ideas
of unification, glorious hopes that pointed to Rome as the capital
of a united Italy. He found the Englishman interested in the Italian
question, if not enthusiastic. He was known to be rich, and therefore
worthy to be cultivated. Colonel Murano cultivated him assiduously,
gave him the entrance to his shabby but patriotic _salon_, where Mr.
Harefield listened courteously while patriots with long hair, and
patriots with short hair, discussed the future of Italy.
The Colonel was a widower with a son and daughter--the girl newly
released from the convent of an educational order, where her musical
gifts had been cultivated to the uttermost--the son an incipient
profligate, without the means of gratifying his taste for low
pleasures. There was a nephew, a soldier and an enthusiast like his
uncle, who spent all his evenings in the Colonel’s _salon_, singing
with Beatrix Murano, or listening while she sang.
From the hour in which he first loved Beatrix, Christian Harefield
hated this cousin, with the grave, dark face, sympathetic manners, and
exquisite tenor voice. In him the Englishman saw his only rival.
Later, this young soldier, Antonio Murano, left Florence on military
duty. The coast was clear, Mr. Harefield offered himself to the Colonel
as a husband for his daughter--the Colonel responded warmly. He could
wish no happier alliance for his only girl. She was young--her heart
had never been touched. She could scarcely fail to reciprocate an
attachment which did her so much honour.
‘Are you sure of that?’ asked Christian Harefield. ‘I have fancied
sometimes that there is something more than cousinly regard between the
Signora and Captain Murano.’
The Colonel laughed at the idea. The cousins had been brought up
together like brother and sister--both were enthusiasts in music
and love of country. There was sympathy--an ardent sympathy between
them--nothing more.
Christian Harefield’s jealous temper was not to be satisfied so
easily. He kept his opinion; but passion was stronger than prudence,
and a week after he had made his offer to the father he proposed to
the daughter. She accepted him with a pretty submission that charmed
him--but which meant that she had learnt her lesson. She had been told
that to refuse this chance of fortune was to inflict a deliberate and
cruel injury upon those she loved--her father, for whom life had been
a hard-fought battle, unblest by a single victory--her brother, who
was on the threshold of life, and who needed to be put in the right
road by a friend as powerful as Christian Harefield. The girl accepted
her English suitor, loving that absent one fondly all the while, and
believing she was doing her duty.
Then followed a union which might have been calm and peaceful, nay,
even happy, had fate and Christian Harefield willed it. His wife’s
health rendered a winter in England impossible. The doctors ordered
her southward as soon as autumn began. What more natural than that her
own wishes should point to her native city, the lovely and civilized
Florence? Her husband, at first doting, though always suspicious,
indulged this reasonable desire. At Florence they met the soldier
cousin. He and Mrs. Harefield’s father both belonged to the patriot
party. Both believed that the hour for casting off the Austrian yoke
was close at hand. Colonel Murano’s _salon_ was the rendezvous of all
the _Carbonari_ in the city. It was a political club. Mrs. Harefield
shared the enthusiasm of her father and her cousin, and even her
husband’s stern nature was moved to sympathy with a cause so noble.
Then, by a slow and gradual growth, jealousy took root in the husband’s
heart, and strangled every better feeling. He began to see in his
wife’s love for Florence a secret hankering after an old lover. He
set himself to watch, and the man who watches always sees something
to suspect. His own eyes create the monster. By and by, Antonio
Murano came to England on a secret mission to an exiled chief of the
patriot party, and naturally went northward to visit his cousin. He
was received with outward friendship but inward distrust. Then came
scenes of suppressed bitterness between husband and wife--a sleepless
watchfulness that imagined evil in every look and word, and saw
guilt in actions the most innocent. A life that was verily hell upon
earth. Later there followed positive accusations--the open charge of
infidelity; and, in the indignation kindled by groundless allegations,
Christian Harefield’s wife confessed that she had never loved him, that
she had sacrificed her own inclinations for the benefit of her family.
She confessed further that she had loved Antonio Murano; but declared
at the same time, with tears of mingled anger and shame, that no word
had ever been spoken by either of them since her marriage which her
husband could blame.
‘You have seen him. He has been your chosen companion and friend,’
cried Christian Harefield. ‘If you had meant to be true to me you would
never have seen his face after your marriage. Had you been honest
and loyal I would have forgiven you for not loving me. I will never
forgive you for deceiving me.’
From that hour there was no longer even the semblance of love between
them. On Mr. Harefield’s part there was an ill-concealed aversion
which extended even to his child. Finally came that last Italian
journey--necessitated by the wife’s fast failing health--and with that
journey the end. They went this time not to Florence, Mrs. Harefield’s
beloved home, but to Venice, where she was a stranger. From Venice
they were to go to Rome for the winter, and it was while they were
travelling towards Rome that the catastrophe came. Christian Harefield
believed that his wife had left him with her cousin--that the whole
thing had been deliberately planned between them, Captain Murano
following them southward from Venice.
This was the bitter past upon which Christian Harefield looked back as
he sat before his solitary hearth that wintry night. The story of his
wedded life passed before him like a series of pictures. He might have
made it better, perhaps, if he had been wiser, he told himself; but
he could not have made his wife love him, and he had loved her too
passionately to be satisfied with less than her love. They were doomed
to be miserable.
It was long before he read the Reverend Mother’s statement. The clock
had struck more than once. His servant had come in for the last time,
bringing a fresh supply of wood. The doors had been locked and barred.
The household had gone to bed. It was the dead of night before Mr.
Harefield aroused himself from that long reverie, and opened the sealed
paper which was to confirm Antonio Murano’s story.
He read it slowly and thoughtfully, and believed it. What motive could
any one have for deceiving him, now, after all these years, when the
griefs and passions of the past were dead things--like a handful of
gray dust in a funeral urn?
He rose and paced the room for a long time, deep in thought, holding
the Superior’s letter in his hand. Then, as if moved by a sudden
resolution, he seated himself at his table, and began to write a
letter. It was brief--but he was long in writing it, and when it was
done he sat for some time with the letter lying before him--and
his eyes fixed--as if his mind had gone astray into deep thickets
and jungles of conflicting thought. Then, as if again influenced by
a sudden determination, he folded his letter and put it, with the
Reverend Mother’s statement, into a large envelope.
This he addressed curiously, thus:--
‘For my daughter Beatrix.’
Then, leaving this letter on the table, he lighted a candle and went
upstairs to the long passage out of which his wife’s rooms opened. He
unlocked the door of her sitting-room and went in.
END OF VOL. I.
J. AND W. RIDER, PRINTERS, LONDON.
Corrections
Pages 15-16, which were misplaced in the original, have been restored.
The first line indicates the original, the second the correction.
p. 163
Let the bitter experience of my live govern yours.
Let the bitter experience of my life govern yours.
p. 215
in spite of all those hints and inuendoes
in spite of all those hints and innuendos
p. 227
Mrs. Dulcimer eat her early dinner alone,
Mrs. Dulcimer ate her early dinner alone,
p. 245
parish doctor of Little Yafford, was agreeable surprised
parish doctor of Little Yafford, was agreeably surprised
p. 248
Have your been over exerting yourself lately?
Have you been over exerting yourself lately?
‘She been riding and driving far too much
‘She’s been riding and driving far too much
p. 250
lately she has been particular busy
lately she has been particularly busy
p. 254
have her own way in all the minor detals of life
have her own way in all the minor details of life
p. 262
She like dresses and bonnets.
She likes dresses and bonnets.
p. 307
in having taken the librety to be born.
in having taken the liberty to be born.