MR. BERNARD BROWN
Murder is generally associated in one's mind with darkness, the still
hours of night, and bestiality. It is the outcome of the fierce animal
lust for blood, provoked by low passions working in low minds. De
Quincey's brilliant attempt to elevate it to a place among the fine arts
has only enriched its horrors as an abstract idea. Even detached from
its usual environment of darkness, and ignorance, and vice, it is an
ugly thing.
But here was something quite different. Such a tragedy as this which had
just occurred was possessed of a peculiar hideousness of its own. It
seemed to have completely laid hold of the little group of men gathered
round the body of Sir Geoffrey Kynaston; to have bereft them of all
reasoning power and thought, to have numbed even their limbs and
physical instincts. It was only a few minutes ago since they had left
him, careless and debonair, with his thoughts intent upon the business,
or rather the sport, of the hour. His laugh had been the loudest, his
enjoyment the keenest, and his gun the most deadly of them all. But now
he lay there cold and lifeless, with his heart's blood staining the
green turf, and his sightless eyes dull and glazed. It was an awful
thing!
Physically, he had been the very model of an English country gentleman,
tall and powerful, with great broad shoulders, and strikingly upright
carriage, full of vigorous animal life, with the slight restlessness of
the constant traveler banished by his sudden passion for the girl who
had so lately promised to be his wife.
She drew a little nearer--they were all too much overcome by the shock
of this thing to prevent her--and stood with glazed eyes looking down
upon him. Everything, even the minutest article of his dress, seemed to
appeal to her with a strange vividness. She found herself even studying
the large check of his shooting-coat and the stockings which she had
once laughingly admired, and which he had ever since worn. Her eyes
rested upon the sprig of heliotrope which, with her own fingers, she had
arranged in his button hole, as they had strolled down the garden
together just before the start; and the faint perfume which reached her
where she stood, helped her to realize that she was in the thrall of no
nightmare, but that this thing had really happened. She had never loved
him, she had never even pretended to love him, and it was less any sense
of personal loss than the hideous sin of it which swept in upon her as
she stood there looking down upon him. She recognized, as she could
never have done had he been personally dear to her, the ethical horror
of the thing. The faintness which had almost numbed her senses passed
away. In that swift battle of many sensations it was anger which
survived.
Her voice first broke the deep, awed stillness.
"Who has done this?" she cried, pointing downward.
Her words were like a sudden awakening to them all. They had been
standing like figures in a silent tableau, stricken dumb and motionless.
Now there was a stir. The fire in her tone had dissolved their torpor.
She was standing on rising ground a little above the rest of them, and
her attitude, together with the gesture by which she enforced her words,
was full of intense dramatic force. The slim undulating beauty of her
form was enhanced by the slight disorder of her dress, and her red-gold
hair--she had lost her hat--shone and glistened in the sunlight till
every thread was shining like burnished gold. They themselves were in
the shade of the dark pine trees, and she standing upon the margin of
the moor with the warm sunlight glowing around her, seemed like a being
of another world. Afterwards when they recalled that scene--and there
was no one there who ever forgot it--they could scarcely tell which
seemed the most terrible part to them--the lifeless body of the murdered
man with the terrible writing of death in his white face, or the tragic
figure of Helen Thurwell, the squire's cold, graceful daughter, with her
placid features and whole being suddenly transformed with this wave of
passion.
Mr. Thurwell drew a few steps backward, and his keen gray eyes swept the
open country round.
"There was no one in sight when we got here; but the blackguard can't be
far away!" he said. "Heggs, and you, Smith, and you, Cook, go through
the spinney as fast as you can, one in the middle and one on each side,
mind! I will go up Falcon's Hill and look round. Jem, run to Mallory as
fast as you can for Dr. Holmes, and on to the police station. Quick! all
of you. There's not a moment to lose!"
The desire for action was as strong in them now as had been their former
torpor. Mr. Thurwell and his daughter were alone in less than a minute.
"Helen, I forgot you!" he exclaimed. "I can't leave you alone, and some
one must stay here. Where is Lathon?"
"He has gone on to take Rachel home," she answered. "I will stay here. I
am not afraid. Quick! you can see for miles from the top of the hill and
you have your field glass. Oh, do go. Go!"
He hesitated, but she was evidently very much in earnest.
"I will just climb the hill and hurry down again," he said. "I cannot
leave you here for more than a few minutes. If only we had more men with
us!"
He turned away, and walked swiftly across the moor toward the hill. For
a minute or two she stood watching his departing figure. Then she turned
round with a shudder and buried her face in her clasped hands. Her
appearance was less hard now and more natural, for a sickly sense of
horror at the sight of his body was commencing to assert itself over
that first strange instinct of passionate anger. It was none the less
dreadful to her because in a certain way his removal was a release. She
had promised to marry this man, but there had been scarcely a moment
since when she had not found herself regretting it. Now the sense of
freedom, which she could not altogether evade, was like torture to her.
She dropped on her knees by his side, and took his cold hand in hers. A
few hours ago she dared not have done this, knowing very well that at
the caressing touch of her fingers, she would have felt his strong arms
around her in a passionate and distasteful embrace. But there was no
fear of this now. She would never have to shrink away from him again. He
was dead!
The warm sunlight was glancing among the thickly growing pine trees in
the plantation by her side, casting quaint shadows on the cone-strewn
ground, across the little piece of broken paling in the bottom of the
dry ditch, and upon the mossy bank where his head was resting upon a
sweet-smelling tuft of heather. Most of all it flashed and glittered
upon the inch or two of steel which still lay buried in his side--a
curiously shaped little dagger which, although she strove to keep her
eyes away from it, seemed to have a sort of fascination for her. Every
time her eyes fell upon it, she turned away quickly with a little
shudder; but, nevertheless, she looked at it more than once--and she
remembered it.
The deep stillness of the autumn afternoon presently became almost
oppressive to her. There was the far-off, sweet low murmur of a placid
sea rolling in upon the base of the cliffs, the constant chirping of
ground insects, and the occasional scurrying of a rabbit through the
undergrowth. Once a great lean rat stole up from the ditch,
and--horrible--ran across his body; but at the sound of her startled
movement it paused, sat for a moment quite still, with its wide-open
black eyes blinking at her, and then to her inexpressible relief
scampered away. She was used to the country, with its intense unbroken
silence, but she had never felt it so hard to bear as on that afternoon.
Time became purely relative to her. As a matter of fact, she knew
afterwards that she could not have been alone more than five minutes. It
was like an eternity. She listened in vain for any human sound, even for
the far-off sweep of the scythe in the bracken, or the call of the
laborer to his horses. The tension of those moments was horrible.
She plucked a handful of bay leaves from the ditch, and strove, by
pressing them against her temple, to cool the fever in her blood. Then
she took up once more her position by his side, for horrible though the
sight of it was, his body seemed to have a sort of fascination for her,
and she could not wander far away from it. Once or twice she had looked
round, but there had been no human figure in sight, nor any sign of any.
But as she knelt there on the short turf, pressing the cool leaves to
her aching forehead, she was suddenly conscious of a new sensation.
Without hearing or seeing anything, she knew that some one was
approaching, and, stranger still, she was conscious of a distinct
reluctance to turn her head and see who it was. She heard no footsteps;
the soft stillness was broken by the sound of no human voice. She wished
to turn round, and yet she shrank from it. Something fresh was going to
happen--something was at hand to trouble her. She made a great effort,
and rose to her feet. Then, breaking through her conscious reluctance,
she turned round.
A single figure, at that moment on a slightly elevated ridge of the bare
moor, stood out against the sky. He was walking swiftly toward her, and
yet without any appearance of hurry; and from the direction in which he
was coming, it was evident that he had just left Falcon's Nest. This
fact and his being unknown to her sufficiently established his identity.
It was her father's tenant, Mr. Bernard Brown.