An Open Verdict: A Novel - Volume 1 by M. E. Braddon - HTML preview

CHAPTER XVIII.

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 ne