Lucretia Part 44

"I know it," he answered petulantly. "You! From whom?"

"From Grabman."

"And I from a still better authority,--from Walter Ardworth himself. He lives; he will restore my child!" She extended a letter while she spoke.

He, in return, gave her, not that still crumpled in his hand, but one which he drew from his breast. These letters severally occupied both, begun and finished almost in the same moment.

That from Grabman ran thus:--

DEAR JASON,--Toss up your hat and cry 'hip, hip!' At last, from person to person, I have tracked the lost Vincent Braddell. He lives still! We can maintain his ident.i.ty in any court of law. Scarce in time for the post, I have not a moment for further particulars. I shall employ the next two days in reducing all the evidence to a regular digest, which I will despatch to you. Meanwhile, prepare, as soon as may be, to put me in possession of my fee,--5000 pounds; and my expedition merits something more. Yours, NICHOLAS GRABMAN.

The letter from Ardworth was no less positive:--

MADAM,--In obedience to the commands of a dying friend, I took charge of his infant and concealed its existence from his mother,--yourself.

On returning to England, I need not say that I was not unmindful of my trust. Your son lives; and after mature reflection I have resolved to restore him to your arms. In this I have been decided by what I have heard, from one whom I can trust, of your altered habits, your decorous life, your melancholy infirmities, and the generous protection you have given to the orphan of my poor cousin Susan, my old friend Mainwaring.

Alfred Braddell himself, if it be permitted to him to look down and read my motives, will pardon me, I venture to feel a.s.sured, this departure from his injunctions. Whatever the faults which displeased him, they have been amply chastised. And your son, grown to man, can no longer be endangered by example, in tending the couch, or soothing the repentance of his mother.

These words are severe; but you will pardon them in him who gives you back your child. I shall venture to wait on you in person, with such proofs as may satisfy you as to the ident.i.ty of your son. I count on arriving at Laughton to-morrow. Meanwhile, I simply sign myself by a name in which you will recognize the kinsman to one branch of your family, and the friend of your dead husband. J. WALTER ARDWORTH.

CRAVEN HOTEL, October, 1831.

"Well, and are you not rejoiced?" said Lucretia, gazing surprised on Varney's sullen and unsympathizing face.

"No! because time presses; because, even while discovering your son, you may fail in securing his heritage; because, in the midst of your triumph, I see Newgate opening to myself. Look you, I too have had my news,--less pleasing than yours. This Stubmore (curse him!) writes me word that he shall certainly be in town next month at farthest, and that he meditates, immediately on his arrival, transferring the legacy from the Bank of England to an excellent mortgage of which he has heard. Were it not for this scheme of ours, nothing would be left for me but flight and exile."

"A month,--that is a long time. Do you think, now that my son is found, and that son like John Ardworth (for there can be no doubt that my surmise was right), with genius to make station the pedestal to the power I dreamed of in my youth, but which my s.e.x forbade me to attain,--do you think I will keep him a month from his inheritance?

Before the month is out, you shall replace what you have taken, and buy your trustee's silence, if need be, either from the sums you have insured, or from the rents of Laughton."

"Lucretia," said Varney, whose fresh colours had grown livid, "what is to be done must be done at once. Percival St. John has heard from his mother. Attend." And Varney rapidly related the questions St. John had put to him, the dreaded arrival of Captain Greville, the danger of so keen an observer, the necessity, at all events, of abridging their visit, the urgency of hastening the catastrophe to its close.

Lucretia listened in ominous and steadfast silence.

"But," she said at last, "you have persuaded St. John to give this man the meeting in London,--to put off his visit for the time. St. John will return to us to-morrow. Well, and if he finds his Helen is no more! Two nights ago I, for the first time, mingled in the morning draught that which has no antidote and no cure. This night two drops more, and St.

John will return to find that Death is in the house before him. And then for himself,--the sole remaining barrier between my son and this inheritance,--for himself, why, grief sometimes kills suddenly; and there be drugs whose effect simulates the death-stroke of grief."

"Yet, yet, this rapidity, if necessary, is perilous. Nothing in Helen's state forbodes sudden death by natural means. The strangeness of two deaths, both so young; Greville in England, if not here,--hastening down to examine, to inquire. With such prepossessions against you, there must be an inquest."

"Well, and what can be discovered? It was I who shrank before,--it is I who now urge despatch. I feel as in my proper home in these halls. I would not leave them again but to my grave. I stand on the hearth of my youth; I fight for my rights and my son's! Perish those who oppose me!"

A fell energy and power were in the aspect of the murderess as she thus spoke; and while her determination awed the inferior villany of Varney, it served somewhat to mitigate his fears.

As in more detail they began to arrange their execrable plans, Percival, while the horses were being harnessed to take him to the nearest post-town, sought Helen, and found her in the little chamber which he had described and appropriated as her own, when his fond fancy had sketched the fair outline of the future.

This room had been originally fitted up for the private devotions of the Roman Catholic wife of an ancestor in the reign of Charles II; and in a recess, half veiled by a curtain, there still stood that holy symbol which, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic, no one sincerely penetrated with the solemn pathos of sacred history can behold unmoved,--the Cross of the Divine Agony. Before this holy symbol Helen stood in earnest reverence. She did not kneel (for the forms of the religion in which she had been reared were opposed to that posture of wors.h.i.+p before the graven image), but you could see in that countenance, eloquent at once with the enthusiasm and the meekness of piety, that the soul was filled with the memories and the hopes which, age after age, have consoled the sufferer and inspired the martyr. The soul knelt to the idea, if the knee bowed not to the image, embracing the tender grandeur of the sacrifice and the vast inheritance opened to faith in the redemption.

The young man held his breath while he gazed. He was moved, and he was awed. Slowly Helen turned towards him, and, smiling sweetly, held out to him her hand. They seated themselves in silence in the depth of the overhanging cas.e.m.e.nt; and the mournful character of the scene without, where dimly, through the misty rains, gloomed the dark foliage of the cedars, made them insensibly draw closer to each other in the instinct of love when the world frowns around it. Percival wanted the courage to say that he had come to take farewell, though but for a day, and Helen spoke first.

"I cannot guess why it is, Percival, but I am startled at the change I feel in myself--no, not in health, dear Percival; I mean in mind--during the last few months,--since, indeed, we have known each other. I remember so well the morning in which my aunt's letter arrived at the dear vicarage. We were returning from the village fair, and my good guardian was smiling at my notions of the world. I was then so giddy and light and thoughtless, everything presented itself to me in such gay colours, I scarcely believed in sorrow. And now I feel as if I were awakened to a truer sense of nature,--of the ends of our being here; I seem to know that life is a grave and solemn thing. Yet I am not less happy, Percival. No, I think rather that I knew not true happiness till I knew you. I have read somewhere that the slave is gay in his holiday from toil; if you free him, if you educate him, the gayety vanishes, and he cares no more for the dance under the palm-tree. But is he less happy? So it is with me!"

"My sweet Helen, I would rather have one gay smile of old, the arch, careless laugh which came so naturally from those rosy lips, than hear you talk of happiness with that quiver in your voice,--those tears in your eyes."

"Yet gayety," said Helen, thoughtfully, and in the strain of her pure, truthful poetry of soul, "is only the light impression of the present moment,--the play of the mere spirits; and happiness seems a forethought of the future, spreading on, far and broad, over all time and s.p.a.ce."

"And you live, then, in the future at last; you have no misgivings now, my Helen? Well, that comforts me. Say it, Helen,--say the future will be ours!"

"It will, it will,--forever and forever," said Helen, earnestly; and her eyes involuntarily rested on the Cross.

In his younger spirit and less imaginative nature Percival did not comprehend the depth of sadness implied in Helen's answer; taking it literally, he felt as if a load were lifted from his heart, and kissing with rapture the hand he held, he exclaimed: "Yes, this shall soon, oh, soon be mine! I fear nothing while you hope. You cannot guess how those words have cheered me; for I am leaving you, though but for a few hours, and I shall repeat those words, for they will ring in my ear, in my heart, till we meet again."

"Leaving me!" said Helen, turning pale, and her clasp on his hand tightening. Poor child, she felt mysteriously a sentiment of protection in his presence.

"But at most for a day. My old tutor, of whom we have so often conversed, is on his way to England,--perhaps even now in London. He has some wrong impressions against your aunt; his manner is blunt and rough.

It is necessary that I should see him before he comes. .h.i.ther,--you know how susceptible is your aunt's pride,--just to prepare him for meeting her. You understand?"

"What impressions against my aunt? Does he even know her?" asked Helen.

And if such a sentiment as suspicion could cross that candid innocence of mind, that sentiment towards this stern relation whose arms had never embraced her, whose lips had never spoken of the past, whose history was as a sealed volume, disturbed and disquieted her.

"It is because he has never known her that he does her wrong. Some old story of her indiscretion as a girl, of her uncle's displeasure,--what matters now?" said Percival, shrinking sensitively from one disclosure that might wound Helen in her kinswoman. "Meanwhile, dearest, you will be prudent,--you will avoid this damp air, and keep quietly at home, and amuse yourself, sweet fancier of the future, in planning how to improve these old halls when they and their unworthy master are your own. G.o.d bless you, G.o.d guard you, Helen!"

He rose, and with that loyal chivalry of love which felt respect the more for the careless guardians.h.i.+p to which his Helen was intrusted, he refrained from that parting kiss which their pure courts.h.i.+p warranted, for which his lip yearned. But as he lingered, an irresistible impulse moved Helen's heart. Mechanically she opened her arms, and her head sank upon his shoulder. In that embrace they remained some moments silent, and an angel might unreprovingly have heard their hearts beat through the stillness.

At length Percival tore himself from those arms which relaxed their imploring hold reluctantly; she heard his hurried step descend the stairs, and in a moment more the roll of the wheels in the court without; a dreary sense, as of some utter desertion, some everlasting bereavement, chilled and appalled her. She stood motionless, as if turned to stone, on the floor; suddenly the touch of something warm on her hand, a plaining whine, awoke her attention; Percival's favourite dog missed his master, and had slunk for refuge to her. The dread sentiment of loneliness vanished in that humble companions.h.i.+p; and seating herself on the ground, she took the dog in her arms, and bending over it, wept in silence.

CHAPTER XXIV. MURDER, TOWARDS HIS DESIGN, MOVES LIKE A GHOST.

The reader will doubtless have observed the consummate art with which the poisoner had hitherto advanced upon her prey. The design conceived from afar, and executed with elaborate stealth, defied every chance of detection against which the ingenuity of practised villany could guard.

Grant even that the deadly drugs should betray the nature of the death they inflicted, that by some unconjectured secret in the science of chemistry the presence of those vegetable compounds which had hitherto baffled every known and positive test in the posthumous examination of the most experienced surgeons, should be clearly ascertained, not one suspicion seemed likely to fall upon the ministrant of death. The medicines were never brought to Madame Dalibard, were never given by her hand; nothing ever tasted by the victim could be tracked to her aunt.

The helpless condition of the cripple, which Lucretia had a.s.sumed, forbade all notion even of her power of movement. Only in the dead of night when, as she believed, every human eye that could watch her was sealed in sleep, and then in those dark habiliments which (even as might sometimes happen, if the victim herself were awake) a chance ray of light struggling through c.h.i.n.k or shutter could scarcely distinguish from the general gloom, did she steal to the chamber and infuse the colourless and tasteless liquid [The celebrated acqua di Tufania (Tufania water) was wholly without taste or colour] in the morning draught, meant to bring strength and healing. Grant that the draught was untouched, that it was examined by the surgeon, that the fell admixture could be detected, suspicion would wander anywhere rather than to that crippled and helpless kinswoman who could not rise from her bed without aid.

But now this patience was to be abandoned, the folds of the serpent were to coil in one fell clasp upon its prey.

Fiend as Lucretia had become, and hardened as were all her resolves by the discovery of her son, and her impatience to endow him with her forfeited inheritance, she yet shrank from the face of Helen that day; on the excuse of illness, she kept her room, and admitted only Varney, who stole in from time to time, with creeping step and haggard countenance, to sustain her courage or his own. And every time he entered, he found Lucretia sitting with Walter Ardworth's open letter in her hand, and turning with a preternatural excitement that seemed almost like aberration of mind, from the grim and horrid topic which he invited, to thoughts of wealth and power and triumph and exulting prophecies of the fame her son should achieve. He looked but on the blackness of the gulf, and shuddered; her vision overleaped it, and smiled on the misty palaces her fancy built beyond.

Late in the evening, before she retired to rest, Helen knocked gently at her aunt's door. A voice, quick and startled, bade her enter; she came in, with her sweet, caressing look, and took Lucretia's hand, which struggled from the clasp. Bending over that haggard brow, she said simply, yet to Lucretia's ear the voice seemed that of command, "Let me kiss you this night!" and her lips pressed that brow. The murderess shuddered, and closed her eyes; when she opened them, the angel visitor was gone.

Night deepened and deepened into those hours from the first of which we number the morn, though night still is at her full. Moonbeam and starbeam came through the cas.e.m.e.nts shyly and fairylike as on that night when the murderess was young and crimeless, in deed, if not in thought,--that night when, in the book of Leechcraft, she meted out the hours in which the life of her benefactor might still interpose between her pa.s.sion and its end. Along the stairs, through the hall, marched the armies of light, noiseless and still and clear as the judgments of G.o.d amidst the darkness and shadow of mortal destinies. In one chamber alone, the folds, curtained close, forbade all but a single ray; that ray came direct as the stream from a lantern; as the beam reflected back from an eye,--as an eye it seemed watchful and steadfast through the dark; it shot along the floor,--it fell at the foot of the bed.

Suddenly, in the exceeding hush, there was a strange and ghastly sound,--it was the howl of a dog! Helen started from her sleep.

Percival's dog had followed her into her room; it had coiled itself, grateful for the kindness, at the foot of the bed. Now it was on the pillow, she felt its heart beat against her hand,--it was trembling; its hairs bristled up, and the howl changed into a shrill bark of terror and wrath. Alarmed, she looked round; quickly between her and that ray from the crevice a shapeless darkness pa.s.sed, and was gone, so undistinguishable, so without outline, that it had no likeness of any living form; like a cloud, like a thought, like an omen, it came in gloom, and it vanished.

Helen was seized with a superst.i.tious terror; the dog continued to tremble and growl low. All once more was still; the dog sighed itself to rest. The stillness, the solitude, the glimmer of the moon,--all contributed yet more to appall the enfeebled nerves of the listening, shrinking girl. At length she buried her face under the clothes, and towards daybreak fell into a broken, feverish sleep, haunted with threatening dreams.

CHAPTER XXV. THE MESSENGER SPEEDS.