It is easy to imagine how, in so small a community as Cacouna, the news
of a frightful crime committed in their very midst, would spread from
mouth to mouth. How groups of listeners would gather in the streets,
round every man who had anything of the story to tell. How the country
people who had been in town when the murdered man was brought home,
hurried along the solitary roads with a kind of terror upon them, and
carried the news out to the villages and farms around. As to the
murderer, there was a strange confusion in the minds of many of the
townspeople. Doctor Morton's feud with Clarkson had been so well known
that, if there had been any signs of premeditation or design about the
crime, suspicion would have turned naturally upon him. But there was no
such appearance, nor the smallest reason to suppose that Clarkson had
been within half a mile of the spot that day. On the contrary, no
reasonable doubt could exist that the real murderer was the Indian who
had been found among the bushes. The men who knew him spoke of him as
passionate, brutal, more than half-savage--there was perfect fitness
between his appearance and character, and the barbarous manner of his
crime. And yet while everybody spoke of him as undoubtedly guilty,
almost everybody had a thought of Clarkson haunting his mind, and an
uneasy desire to find out the truth, entirely incompatible with the
clearness of the circumstantial evidence.
It was already nearly nine o'clock when Margery going from the Cottage
to Mr. Leigh's, on some errand to his housekeeper, brought back with her
the story which a passing acquaintance had carried so far. She came into
the parlour full of the not unpleasant sensation of having a piece of
strange and horrible news to tell.
Mrs. Costello had left the room for a moment and Lucia was alone,
sitting rather drearily looking into the fire, with her work fallen
into her lap, when Margery came in.
"Miss Lucia, there's an awful thing happened."
"What, Margery?" Lucia half smiled, for Margery loved marvels, and made
much of them.
"Doctor Morton is dead."
"Impossible! Hush, don't say it."
"It is true, miss. This afternoon."
"But how? It is incredible."
"He was found, Miss Lucia, lying dead by the roadside a piece beyond
Dawson's mill. And they found the man that did it."
"You don't mean to say that he had been--" she stopped, shuddering.
"Murdered. Yes," and Margery went into all the details she had heard
from her gossip.
Mrs. Costello, attracted by the tone of their voices, had come to the
door between the parlour and her bedroom, and stood there listening.
Both she and Lucia, who, like every one else except perhaps his wife,
had heard of the doctor's proceedings against Clarkson, thought only of
him as the murderer until Margery finished her recital with--
"It all comes of having them savages of Indians about. I never could
abide the sight of them."
Lucia caught a glimpse of her mother's face. She felt her own muscles
stiffen with fear. With desperate strength she steadied her voice.
"What do you mean about Indians?" she said.
"It is an Indian as done it," Margery answered half indignant. "There's
no white man, let him be ever such a brute, would have chopped the body
up like that."
"You said they had taken the murderer?"
"They took him, and he's in gaol. Dawson's men knew him. He has been
working for Dawson lately. They say he comes from Moose Island. Mr.
Strafford would know him most like."
There was nothing further to be asked, and Margery went out of the room,
seeing no more than the natural horror on those two white faces of
mother and daughter, which dreaded to meet and read the thought, in each
other's eyes.
It was for this, then, that they had delayed their journey. Neither
doubted for a moment the guilt of the wretched creature who was the
haunting terror and misery of their lives; and it was not strange that,
overwhelmed with the stronger and more personal interest, they should
forget to wonder or lament over the dead, cut down in the very beginning
of life, or to think of the desolate and widowed bride meeting her first
grief in the unnatural guise of murder.
Mrs. Costello came back to her chair by the fireside. She could no
longer take her fears and anxieties into the solitude of her own room,
and hide them there. There was both pain and comfort in knowing that
Lucia now shared with her every additional weight--even this last, which
she scarcely yet comprehended. But it was some time before either spoke.
Each was trying to gauge the new depth which seemed to have opened under
their feet--the wife and daughter of a murderer! The old ignominy, the
old degradation, had been all but intolerable. How then should they bear
this? And their secret, must it not be known now? become the common
gossip of the country, of the people who had called them friends? Each
felt instinctively that their thoughts were running on in the same
channels, each shrank from words. Yet, it was needful to consult, to ask
each other the question, "What shall we do?"
At last Mrs. Costello roused herself.
"We must put off our journey," she said, with a smothered sigh, which,
indeed, had nearly been a groan.
Lucia looked up.
"It may not be true," she answered, knowing that there was no need to
say what "it" was--the idea which had seized upon both their minds with
so deadly a grasp.
"It may not, God grant it! But we must know; and if it is, I ought to be
here."
"Mother, you cannot. It will kill you."
Mrs. Costello smiled, the wan smile of long-taxed patience.
"No," she said, "I think not. Life is hard for both of us, hardest
perhaps for you, darling, just now, but I have no thought that it is
over yet for either of us."
Lucia came and knelt down in her old place by her mother's side. It
always seemed as if thus close together, able to speak to each other as
much by caresses as by words, they were both stronger, and could look
more calmly at the calamities which threatened them with every evil
except that of separation.
"You will write to Mr. Strafford?" Lucia asked.
"Yes; but first we must know certainly."
"And how to do that?"
"There will be no difficulty to-morrow. Mr. Leigh is sure to hear the
particulars. I will go and ask him about them."
"You do not mean to tell him?"
"No; it will be easy enough without that, to ask about a subject which
every one will be talking of."
"Mamma, I can go to Mr. Leigh as well as you. I can go better, for I
shall not suffer as you will, and I can bring you home a faithful
account of what I hear."
"Darling, all this is new to you. I have had to serve a long
apprenticeship to learn self-restraint."
Lucia laughed bitterly. "See the advantage of my Indian blood," she
said. "Trust me, mother, I will be as steady as those ancestors of mine
who bore torture without flinching."
Mrs. Costello bent down and kissed her child's forehead.
"Yours is a better heroism, Lucia; for mental pain is harder to bear
than physical, and you would suffer to save me."
"We suffer together, mamma. I must take my share. To-morrow I shall go,
as usual, to Mr. Leigh's, and bring back all I can learn. But he will
wonder to see me, and still more if he hears that we are not going
away."
"You must simply tell him our journey is put off. He will ask no
questions, and only think I am very dilatory and changeable. No one else
is likely to think of us at all for a day or two to come."
They were silent again for a little while. Lucia's thoughts, relieved
from the first heavy pressure on them by the very fact of having spoken,
began to turn from the criminal to the victim; from their own share in
the horror to that of others. One thing seemed to stand out clear and
plain from the confusion which still enveloped all else. She, the
daughter of the murderer, could never again meet the wife of the
murdered man as a friend. If the punishment of the father descended to
the children, did not their guilt descend too? Already she seemed to
feel the stain of blood upon her hand, and to shrink from herself, as
all innocent persons ought to do, henceforward. And Bella, her old
companion and friend, must shrink from her most of all; the very spirit
of the dead would surely rise up to forbid all intercourse between them.
Lucia had not boasted of her self-command without reason. A mind
naturally strong, and supported both by pride and affection, had enabled
her to meet with courage the bitterness and misery of the past weeks.
But she was only a girl still, and had not learned to rule her thoughts
as well as her looks and words. So if they grew morbid, and her dreary
imagination sometimes tortured her uselessly and cruelly, it was no
great wonder. She could suffer and be silent; but she had not yet learnt
so to rule her spirit as to save herself needless suffering.
Thus the very intensity of her sympathy for Bella only reacted in
loathing and horror of herself; and she had begun to try to devise means
for carrying out that avoidance of all most nearly connected with the
dead, which seemed to her an imperative duty, when she was startled by
her mother's voice.
"If it is he," she said--and it seemed that they both shrank from any
plainer expression of their thoughts than these vague phrases--"if it is
he our hardest task is before us. How will you bear, Lucia, to meet
them all again?"
"Mother, I cannot! Surely you do not think of it. How can _we_"--she
shuddered as she spoke--"how can we go again among any innocent people?"
"My child, we _must_. More than that, we must keep our secret, if we
can, still."
"But Bella? Mother, how can I look at her--a widow--and know who I am,
and who has done it?"
"Listen to me, Lucia. My poor child, your burden has been heavy lately;
do not make it heavier than it need be. The crime and the horror are bad
enough, but we have no share in them. No; think of it reasonably. The
wife and child of a criminal, even where there has been daily
association between them, are not condemned, but rather pitied. No mind,
but one cruelly prejudiced, would brand them with his guilt. Do not
punish yourself, then, where others would acquit you. But, indeed, I
need not tell you how our very separation is a safeguard to us--to you
especially. Think of these things; and do not suffer yourself to imagine
that there is a bar between you and Bella just now, when I know you
love her more than ever."
Lucia's head lay upon her mother's knee. Mrs. Costello's touch on the
soft hair, her tone of gentle reproof, and the thoughts her words called
up, brought tears, fast and thick, to her child's eyes. Lucia had shed
few tears in her life. Until lately she had known no cause for them; and
lately they had not come. With dry eyes and throbbing temples she had
gone through the most sorrowful hours; but now the spell seemed broken,
and a sense of calm and relief came with the change. Mrs. Costello went
on,--
"There is another reason why we must appear as we have always done.
Suspicion is not proof. Margery's story, and more, may be true, and yet
it may be that, three months hence, all, as regards ourselves, will be
just as it has been. We must not, through a blind fear of one calamity,
put ourselves in the way of another. Neither of us can look much at the
future to-night; but we must not forget that there is a future. So it is
still the old task which is before us, to keep our secret."
The voice had been very steady until the last word; but as that was
spoken, it faltered and failed so suddenly that Lucia looked up. She
sprang to her feet, but just in time. The over-tried strength had given
way, and Mrs. Costello had fallen back in a deep fainting fit.