Note: Images of the original pages are available through
Internet Archive/American Libraries. See
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Transcriber's note:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
In the numbering of chapters, XIV was omitted in the
original book.
Inconsistent hyphenation, punctuation, printing and spelling
errors have been corrected silently.
The author of this work, Charlotte Mary Brame, was known
under the pseudonym Bertha M. Clay in North America.
A FAIR MYSTERY
by
BERTHA M. CLAY
Author of "Dora Thorne," "Beyond Pardon," "Love Works Wonders," etc.
New York
International Book Company
17 and 19 Waverley Place
A FAIR MYSTERY.
_THE STORY OF A COQUETTE._
BY CHARLOTTE M. BRAEME.
CHAPTER I.
A VOICE AND A FACE IN THE NIGHT.
"Hush! For the love of mercy, hush, I cannot bear it!"
But that which called forth this protest was only the lisping prayer of
a little child at its mother's knee.
Patty Brace lifted the white-robed figure to her lap, and rested the
brown head on her bosom.
"Mark!" she said, in mild remonstrance, looking at her husband.
"I say I cannot bear it. You have her pray, 'God bless my home.' It is
too much."
"But why not? On this wild, stormy night, when other little ones may be
out in the dashing rain and moaning wind, is it not right to pray, 'God
bless our home?'"
"But how long will we have a home, Patty? Think of to-morrow! oh, Heaven
help me to-morrow! Ruined, disgraced, going out from the home where I
was born, and forced into exile. I cannot bear it. We shall never have a
home again, and our child will grow up homeless!"
"Dear Mark, you cannot go out disgraced when you have done no wrong; and
homeless you will not be, for home is where the heart is, and in any
land we three will be together, and Heaven over all."
"I cannot feel as you do, Patty. I am not gentle and good as you. I
blame myself that by going security for that smooth-tongued rascal, whom
may a curse----"
"Hush!" said Patty, with sudden authority. "Mark, you shall not curse
friend, neighbor, nor enemy. It is not your nature; it is wrong. If you
curse any one how can you look to have prayer answered?"
"Prayer!" said Mark, bitterly. "I begin not to believe in prayer, or
goodness, or any such thing. You have prayed, and that innocent little
victim on your bosom has prayed, in her baby way, and has Heaven heard?
No! We lose our home, and I was born here!"
Heavier grew the round brown head of the two-year-old child on Patty's
breast, the little tanned hands fell apart with a sleepy grace, and the
plump, sunburnt face took the moist flush of childhood's deep rest.
Patty looked at her husband. He leaned against the wooden mantel-shelf,
the ruddy light of the fire leaped across his sorrowful face, and the
wife saw his bronzed cheek wet, with not unmanly tears.
Beyond him, in the range of her vision, was the window looking toward
the garden, and between the bushes of lilac and guelder-roses, Patty had
a swift vision of a tall woman, robed in black, a thin white face,
looking eagerly into the cheerful farm-kitchen.
She leaped to her feet. But the vision had faded; only the wind swept
the wet lilac boughs against the pane, only the guelder-roses looked
like tall, dark, draped forms in the stormy night.
"What is it?" said Mark, as she started.
"Nothing," said the wife; "little Mattie sleeps; I must carry her up to
bed." She chided herself for her fancies.
"Nothing!" said Mark. "I have become nervous and womanish with my
misery. Do you know, Patty, even now I keep looking for some one or
something to come and save me."
"It is never too late," said Patty. "Heaven could save you now--save you
even by so frail a thing as this baby child."
She passed to the upper room, and left Mark still in his misery hastily
retracing his past, in gloomy thought. Patty returned and stood
wistfully, her hand on his arm.
"Don't despond, Mark. We are young, strong, loving. We will give honest
work for honest bread."
"It is not right for the innocent to perish with the guilty," cried
Mark, vehemently; "for you and baby Mattie to perish with me."
"You are not perishing, and how have you been guilty."
"I seem to have been guilty, somehow, all along. My father left me this
farm in fairly good order, the lease for my life and one after me. I
could not rest content. I must improve the land, and improve the
outbuildings, and improve the breed of my cattle and sheep, like a
fool."
"No, like neither a knave nor a fool; like an enterprising farmer,
wanting to improve his prospects and grow with the age. Did not the Duke
of Downsbury say you were one of his best tenants, and that you were a
pattern of good farming and industry?"
"And then," said Mark, intent on saying bitter things of himself, "I had
a thousand pounds, my father's savings, and instead of leaving it where
he placed it, at safe, low interest, I must let the men of the great new
Bank of Downsbury persuade me to give all to them for big interest; and
that bubble burst, the bank collapsed, swindled every one, and left me
nothing."
"No blame to you, and you were left your good name. Are you not known,
in all the country, as Honest Mark Brace?"
"I must be a scoundrel some way, Patty, to have such luck."
"Go on and tell your sins," said Patty. "You married a girl without
money, Patty Leslie by name; you took care of her widowed mother till
she died; and you were so foolish as to have a little girl-child, who
can only eat and not earn."
"Heaven bless her and you!" said Mark. "Marrying the best wife in the
world was about the only good deed I ever did----What do you start that
way for again, Patty?"
"Hark! I heard such a strange noise--a pitiful wail."
"Not further off than my heart," said Mark. "I heard nothing. Once
married, Patty, think how harvest after harvest has been poor, and
seasons bad, so I could not lay up a penny."
"Not your fault----Mark, I _know_ I hear a cry."
"No, no; my ears are keen; I hear nothing. It is the storm. Even the
wind and rain are crying after the out-going of the Brace blood from the
farm of Brackenside. Oh, Patty, why could I not let well enough alone,
and not go and sign security for that villain, Amwell?"
"You did it out of pure heart-kindness. You thought him honest and in
trouble; you helped him."
"And he left me with a hundred pounds to pay. He meant to do it all
along. He robbed me; I robbed you; and to-morrow my goods must be
seized. The crops will be bid off as they stand in the ground, and the
farm tools and the house goods with them, for this terrible security. I
have tried everywhere to get help. I spent all to-day seeking for some
one to lend to me. But since Farmer Dobbs holds a mortgage on my live
stock for the debt the burning of the big barn brought me into, I cannot
get any help. The lease must be sold to finish paying up Dobbs. I will
not run off in debt like that scoundrel Amwell, and, with what is left,
we can emigrate. Patty, oh, how can I go! I love every stick, and every
tree, and every sod. My mother and father lie here in yon churchyard,
and I had hoped to lie by them."
Honest Mark Brace covered his face with his hands, and his strong, tall
figure shook with the storm of his sorrow. He loved every foot of this
land, where, boy and man, he had sung at his work and lived popular and
respected. A fine, stalwart young Englishman, intensely a home-lover, it
seemed to him impossible that other skies could be so blue, other
breezes so jocund, other fields so green, as these that blessed his
birthplace.
Patty, in mute sympathy, clasped her arms about his neck, friend in woe
as in joy. She, too, loved and suffered. But hers was a cheerful,
hopeful, pious soul: she could not despair as Mark did. Mark had been
loudly accusing himself where he was guiltless; now, with the
inconsistency of misery, he turned to declare his own uprightness and,
by implication, the injustice of Heaven.
"Why has this come to me? Other worse men have happier fortune. Have I
swindled men like the bankers, who carried off my all? Have I lied like
Ned Amwell? Did I ever cheat in my men's wages? Have I sent the poor
empty from my door? Have I failed to pay my tithes, or missed church on
Sundays? Do I drink? Do I swear? Do I ever go to sleep in church? Why,
then, have I such trouble?"
The wild minglings of crimes, errors, and peccadilloes might have made a
disinterested listener laugh. It did not make Patty laugh, nor did it
call forth an answer. She turned an intent ear to the outer world and
said, uneasily:
"Mark, listen! Other souls are in pain. It is not the wind that I
hear--not the dashing rain. I have heard sobs, and moans, and crying in
the night--a child crying--like a little baby soul that has lost its way
and can find neither earth nor heaven."
"Your fancies make me mad," cried Mark, angrily.
"My troubles are real, and so will yours be to-morrow----"
Shrill and clear the cry quivered on the air. He, too, heard it.
"It is little Mattie," he cried. "Run to her."
And he followed Patty, fleet-footed, up the stairs.
But little rosy Mattie slept tranquilly, and the two came slowly down.
Patty opened the kitchen window, and the swirling rain drenched her dark
hair as she leaned into the darkness.
"Come in; there will be nights enough to face storms," said Mark,
hardly. "We are only both fanciful; or, as my old grannie used to tell
me, since we are flitting from the hearth where we have kept warm so
long, the souls of my ancestors are mourning for my sorrow. Poor old
grannie! little she knew how I should leave the old roof-tree."
Patty sprung to her feet.
"Mark, come with me! It is no fancy--no spirit. It is real; some human
being out in this tempest. Let us search everywhere, and give the
homeless a shelter this last night that we have a home."
She ran from the room, and Mark followed her into the stone-flagged
entry. Her vehemence carried him away. He reached over her shoulder, and
aided her trembling hands to undo the door-bolt.
Starless the night; no balm on the summer air; the raw chill of autumn
brooding under the beating rain; a murky heaven over land and sea; and
once again that wild, only half-human wail, coming up now from their
very feet!
Patty sprung into the dark, vine-draped porch; the red light from the
kitchen crept fitfully to the threshold, and close beside the door-sill,
lay a bundle in the poor shelter of the latticed porch.
From that bundle came, shrill and piteous, that miserable cry.