Read Ebook: A Whim and Its Consequences Collection of British Authors Vol. CXIV by James G P R George Payne Rainsford

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ughter with himself. Without entering into long explanations, he had stated that he had the power to settle that sum upon his wife; implying, untruly, that he had not the power of lending it under other circumstances. Mr. Tracy was obliged to accept his terms without inquiry. Emily yielded with despair in her heart, and dark forebodings in her mind. She had but one consolation--one support--that, by the sacrifice of all that was most dear, she was saving her father. She repeated it to herself a thousand times a-day; and kept it ever before her in the weary and wearing hours of the night. It was the only means she had of keeping the bitter anguish of her spirit from bursting forth before every eye. Do what she would, it did sometimes appear: and Mr. Tracy felt the silent reproach, and dared not pause and think; but filled every moment with some occupation, however trifling, which might withdraw his mind from the terrible consciousness, that he was sacrificing his child.

When the bell rang, he walked down to the drawing-room with a quick step. His two daughters were there alone--Emily exceedingly pale, but calm, though very grave; Rose striving for cheerfulness with an effort almost hysterical. The General was absent in London. Sir William Winslow was not yet down, though he had only arrived that morning from town, and might be supposed to feel eagerness to be with his betrothed as much as possible. Five, ten minutes passed; dinner was announced; and then some more time went by; till, at length, Mr. Tracy sent up a servant to inform his guest that they waited for him; and in a few minutes more, Sir William presented himself. His appearance, however, struck everybody as very strange. His face was usually florid; his manner calm and resolute; his tone quick and decided,--but now his cheek was like a sheet of gray paper; his eyes wandering and haggard; his step vacillating; his tone wavering, and his words confused. He apologized for the tardiness of his appearance, saying, that he had felt fatigued with his journey, and somewhat ill, and had fallen asleep. Emily expressed no concern or sympathy, though his excuses were principally addressed to her. They had had a full explanation together. He knew the terms on which he obtained her hand; and she did not wish him to suppose her moved by feelings she did not experience. It was her person he sought to possess, not her love. That he obtained; she could give no more.

Mechanically he offered her his arm, to take her in to dinner; sat beside her, and talked. It was strange, rambling conversation; sometimes distilled drop by drop, as if each word were the last he would ever speak; sometimes frightfully rapid. They formed a strange contrast, he and Emily--she in her calm taciturnity; he in his perturbed, unequal eloquence. Yet there were strong feelings at the heart of both: hers high, grand, ennobling; a battle fought, a struggle striven, a victory won over self:--his turbulent, agitating, oppressive; a fierce contest, a terrible strife, a losing battle against remorse and dismay. There was nothing harsh, nothing resisting in her demeanour. It was all done; the combat of the mind was over--the assent was given: she yielded herself to the knife: she was Jephthah's daughter in the mountains, the expiation of her father's folly, prepared or preparing for the sacrifice. She was cold. How could she be otherwise? But there was no harshness.

He, on the contrary, was strangely excited. Every time the door opened, he turned round with a start, and looked with straining eyes behind him. When the butler asked in a whisper of Mr. Tracy, what wines he should set upon the table after dinner--a question he had forgotten to put before--Sir William Winslow listened with all his ears to catch the sounds, as if they bore matter of life and death to him; and when Mr. Tracy answered aloud, "Some red hermitage and claret," he applied himself to talk again with exceeding vehemence.

The shadow of the dead haunted him. The gaunt spectre of Remorse was ever before his eyes.

Doubt too--terrible, vague, cloudy, indefinite doubt, the most oppressive of all states of mind, the most fearful form of Nemesis--hung over him like a brooding fury. "Was he really dead?" he asked himself; "Was the man slain?" He had fallen very heavily. That last blow had been followed by a sound strange and frightful: the cracking of solid bone mingled with a deathly groan. The eyes--he had seen them even in the dim twilight--had swum mortally in the sinking head. There had been a gasp which he did not like to think of, a dire clutching after breath of lungs that would receive it no more. What he would have given to creep quietly and silently down those wintry walls, and look at the spot where he had left him! to feel about with his hands in the darkness, and ascertain if the body was still there! But he sat chained to his seat in marble terror. He dared not turn his eyes towards the side where the deed had been done; he hardly dared to think of it, lest his thoughts unwittingly should find a tongue to bear witness against him. Yet he remembered that no one had seen the deed, as far as he knew; that he had met the object of his crime by accident, as he was returning to the house after a short walk in the grounds; that he had encountered no one by the way, either going or coming; that he had even gone out of the house by one of the conservatories, which led directly to a close and narrow walk, so that none could tell he had ever set his foot across the threshold. All these seemed comfortable reflections; but yet, strange to say, they brought neither comfort nor assurance. There is a consciousness that murder has its mysterious witnesses, which ever sits heavily on the felon's spirit. Why, he knew not, but he felt detected, even while he strove to prove to himself that detection was impossible. Oh, crime is a terrible thing!

Nevertheless the whole of dinner-time passed over quietly: there was nothing took place to cause alarm; and when Emily and Rose left the table, Mr. Tracy remarked, "Sir William, you do not seem well. If you would take my advice, you would send for our worthy surgeon, Mr. Woodyard, and adopt some precautionary measures. I think you must have overfatigued yourself."

"I had a hard day's work in London, yesterday," replied his guest, "running after those lawyers all day long; and I travelled all night. I did not sleep either, though I usually sleep as well in a carriage as a bed. Perhaps I am a little heated. My face is flushed, is it not?"

It was as pale as death.

"Well, what is the matter with you?" he asked, as soon as the young baronet was pointed out as his patient; and, pressing his hand upon the pulse, he stared into Sir William's face, as if he wished to put him out of countenance.

"I do not know, doctor," replied the other. "I do not feel well--am fatigued--have got a head-ache--my temples throb; and my thoughts are somewhat confused."

"You have got something on your mind," said Sandy Woodyard, thinking of Emily, whom the old man loved dearly, and did not like to see sacrificed; "your conscience is not quiet, I should think--this is all mental."

"What do you mean, Sir?" asked Sir William Winslow, fiercely; his pride and his courage coming arm in arm to his aid the moment he was attacked in front.

"I mean just what I say," replied the surgeon, nothing daunted; "there is no sign in the pulse or the temperature of the skin, to show any corporeal ailment. It must be mental; and the best thing to prevent the mind acting too strongly on the body, will be to let you blood. Bring me a basin and a good stout stick, flunky."

Sir William Winslow submitted willingly enough, though he hated the old man mortally, for words which touched rudely but unwittingly on the deep concealed wound. Sandy Woodyard made him grasp the stick tightly in his hand, pierced the arm, and as the blood spirted forth, indulged in a grim smile, muttering. "Ay, black--damned black--black blood as ever I saw--very needful to draw this off--we must have a good drop!"

And a good drop he did certainly take; for, whether, from judging it really necessary, or from a slight touch of malice, he bled the baronet till he fainted. Sir William was carried to his room, and soon brought to consciousness again; but good Mr. Woodyard was not aware that, in one respect, at least, he had conferred a favour, by affording a fair excuse to his patient for not joining the party below any more that night. Even that was a relief; but it was not till the next morning that Sir William Winslow was aware of all he had escaped.

It was the custom at Northferry, for the under gardener, every night, before he retired to rest, to perambulate the grounds, and then to let loose some large dogs, serving as very necessary guards to a place which, by its open boundaries, and solitary situation, was much exposed to depredation. On the night in question, about ten o'clock, he sallied forth, when the moon was just rising, faint, dim, and watery, as she not unfrequently appears after one of those fine, warm, unseasonable, February days, with a few thin lines of gray and white cloud drawn across her sickly disk. She gave a good deal of light, however; and he took his way along the paths, rather enjoying the walk than feeling it a burthensome task. When he approached the confines of the grounds, on the field side, and came near the little temple so often mentioned, he saw, by the beams of the moon, something lying, partly on the path, partly off, like a large dog curled up to spring at him; and he paused in doubt and some alarm. The object remained quite still; and drawing slowly nearer, he found it was the body of a man. He touched the hand; it was deadly cold; and in terror and consternation he ran straight across the lawns back to the house. Servants and lights soon followed him down to the spot; and consternation and horror reached their height, when it was found, that the very person who a few hours before had been asking for the head-gardener, at the mansion, had been murdered in the grounds. The body was already quite stiff; but it was taken up and carried into one of the tool-houses, while some of the people ran back to give Mr. Tracy information of the event. The rest gathered round the corpse as it lay upon a gardener's bench; and many were the comments made--some ridiculous and almost laughable, some sad, some sublime in their simplicity.

"Well, it is a queer thing to see a dead man, any how," said one of the spectators, in a very low tone; "they all look so dull like."

"Poor man! I wonder what his wife is thinking about now," said another.

"Ah! he saw the sun go down that will rise again to-morrow as bright as ever, and he see it no more," was the observation of an old servant. "Well, my night will soon come too. God send it be not a bloody one, like his!"

Mr. Tracy was soon upon the spot; and walking up to the body, he took a lantern from the hands of one of the men and held it near the corpse, before he asked for any further information than he had received by the way.

"I have seen that face before," he said, after considering the countenance of the dead man for a moment. "It surely is Mr. Roberts, the steward and agent of Sir Harry Winslow. Yes, it certainly is his face. Here, come forward, Taylor, and bear witness what we find upon the body. This is a most strange and terrible affair. I feel almost sure that this is poor Roberts, and the fact of his being killed in these grounds is most extraordinary."

The man he spoke to was his butler, and advancing to his master's side, he held the lantern while Mr. Tracy examined the contents of the dead man's pockets. The first thing that was taken out seemed to settle the identity at once. It was a letter, which had been opened, addressed to "Richard Roberts, Esquire, Winslow Abbey;" and although Mr. Tracy proceeded to read it, in search of any information which could lead to a discovery of the murderer, it may be unnecessary to give the contents in this place, as they have been already laid before the reader. The epistle, in short, was that which Chandos had written the night before, after having quitted the park; but to Mr. Tracy's mind it conveyed no hint of the state of the case. He only saw, that Mr. Winslow had written somewhat sharply, and he thought, "The poor young man will regret this when he finds what a sad fate has overtaken an old and faithful servant of his family."

He handed over the letter, when he had read it, to the butler, with a pencil, saying, "Mark it;" and then proceeded with his examination. Nothing had been taken from the body. The watch was there; the purse was safe in the pocket, though it contained a good deal of money. The pocket-book, with various papers, receipts, bills, promissory notes, memoranda, and letters, was also there. Even a pair of silver spectacles, in a morocco-leather case, had not been disturbed in the waistcoat pocket; and it became apparent that robbery had not been the object, or that the assassin had been disturbed before he had time to reap the fruits of his crime.

The next object of examination was the exact spot where the body had been found; and Mr. Tracy proceeded thither with the under-gardener, followed by all the rest. There were but few traces of feet, for the gravel walk was hard; but there was a quantity of blood where the poor man had lain; and while Mr. Tracy was looking narrowly at the place, one of the men cried, "Here is what did it, Sir;" and at the same time took up the Dutch hoe which was lying on the grass hard by. On holding the lantern to the tool, some blood and gray hair was found upon the blunt edge, and at one corner; and Mr. Tracy ordered it to be conveyed, exactly as it was, to the tool-house, whither, after having concluded his personal inspection of the spot, he returned himself. He there paused and meditated, and at length said to the under-gardener, "Go and call Mr. Acton hither."

In a few minutes, Chandos was in the tool-house. He was perfectly calm and grave, for he had had time to think and to determine upon his conduct.

"Here is a very terrible affair, Acton," said Mr. Tracy. "This poor gentleman has been murdered in the grounds, close to the fish-pond. He asked at the house for you, it seems; and was directed to seek you in the garden. Look at him close, and tell me who he is."

"I do not need to look nearer, Sir," replied Chandos, gazing firmly on the corpse; "it is the body of poor Mr. Roberts, the late Sir Harry Winslow's agent--as good a man as ever lived."

"Did he find you in the garden?" asked Mr. Tracy.

"No, Sir," replied Chandos; "I quitted the garden after speaking a few words to Miss Rose Tracy, by the basin, as she was feeding the gold-fish."

"That must have been very nearly at the time he was seeking you," said Mr. Tracy. "I saw him cross the lawn, and I saw my daughter return about ten minutes afterwards. Did you quit the garden immediately after you saw her?"

"Immediately," answered Chandos.

"Do you know whose hoe that is?" inquired Mr. Tracy, pointing to the one that lay by the dead man.

"Mine, Sir," replied Chandos at once; "I left it leaning against the pillar." And, taking it up, he added, as he looked at it, "The murder must have been committed with this."

"Leave it there," said Mr. Tracy. "Pray what did Mr. Roberts want with you?"

"Of that I can have no notion, Sir," was the young gentleman's reply. "I did not even know that he had been seeking me, till you informed me of the fact just now." He saw that some suspicion was beginning to attach itself to him; but Chandos Winslow was not a man to suffer himself to feel personal alarm easily, and he remained so calm and self-possessed, that Mr. Tracy felt that some vague doubts which he had entertained had done him injustice.

"This affair," he said, at lengthy "is as strange as terrible, and must be immediately inquired into further. Taylor, you remain here with one of the men till the constable can be brought up from the village. Then give the body and the hoe into his charge, and render him every assistance he may require; but nothing must be taken away or altered till the coroner, to whom I shall write immediately, arrives. Let everybody, too, avoid the spot where the crime was committed, in order that any traces which may perhaps be apparent to-morrow, though we have not been able to find them to-night, may not be effaced."

"It may perhaps be better, Sir," said Chandos, "to keep the door by my cottage locked. Then the men will not pass that way to their work. Here is my key; I can go round by the house. Sandes has also a key, which can be fetched from him, if you like."

"Do you know when Sandes left the garden?" asked Mr. Tracy quickly, as if a new thought had struck him.

"A little before myself," answered Chandos. "I met him and his boy in the walk going homeward."

"And are you certain this crime had not been committed before he went home?" was the next inquiry.

"Perfectly, Sir," said Chandos; "for I must have seen the body if it lay by the fish-pond, as you said just now. Sandes must have been out of the grounds, if he went straight forward, before I reached the basin."

"It is all very strange!" said Mr. Tracy; and, taking the key, he left the spot, followed close by Chandos, and some of the servants. No further conversation took place, however; and the young gentleman, with a feeling of deep gloom, returned to his cottage, leaving fate to direct the course of events which had commenced so terribly.

It was half-past eleven when Mr. Tracy returned; and Emily and Rose had retired to rest. He had been called out of the room on business, and neither of the two girls had an idea that anything painful had occurred which might render their waiting his return either a duty or a consolation to their father. Emily's days were days of hard labour; of constant combat with feelings wearing and oppressive; and she first proposed to her sister to go to bed.

"I am weary, dear Rose," she said; "weary of the world, and of myself. Perhaps I may sleep, and that would be a blessing."

Rose hung upon her neck, and wept; but she answered not in words, for she dared not counsel, and she could not console.

Mr. Tracy sat and wrote for some time after his return--to the coroner, to some of the neighbouring magistrates; and then he, too, retired to rest, excited, but not too much for sleep.

On the following morning he rose about half-past eight o'clock, and rang his bell. It was one of the footmen who appeared, and informed him that the valet had been summoned to attend the coroner's inquest, which had been sitting since seven.

"It is strange they did not inform me," observed Mr. Tracy.

"Why, Sir, Taylor said he had all the papers," replied the man; "and that it was a pity to disturb you, as you had not seemed well of late."

"Is Sir William Winslow up?" inquired Mr. Tracy.

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