 1 An autumn evening, with a biting north wind, and the sun going down redly behind the oaks of Blatch-Martin Park. A winding road, with a coppice on one side, and a steep bank topped by a straggling hedge where the black brie leaves are still green while the hips and whores offer a feast for the birds, on the other. A desolate bit of road, remote from human habitation. No glimmer of fire-lit cottage-window in the distance, no grey smoke-breathes curling up above the wood. It's only a mile and a quarter from here to the village of Ozthorpe, yet the belated traveller might fancy himself far from all possibility of shelter. A solitary figure cowering under the hedge, with a vagabond dog crouching close at its side, enhances rather than lessens the solitude of the scene. There is something desolate and dreary in that gaunt figure clad in an old smock-frog, patched with such various shades of stuff as almost a rival Joseph's coat of many colours. The wayfarer is elderly and grim-looking. He has long, grizzled hair and a weather-beaten complexion, hollow cheeks and haggard eyes. Every line in his rugged face tells of privation that has gone near to famine. The dog has the same gaunt frame and hungry look as he sits watching his master gnawing a mouldy crust which he has just extracted from the blue cotton handkerchief that holds all his worldly gear. The hungry master gnaws and the hungry mongrel envies, wagging his poor stump of a tail ever and anon in mute supplication, once or twice bursting into a tremulous whine. His owner looks at him dubiously out of a corner of his eye, and at last, with a reluctant air, relinquishes his grip on the crust and tosses the remaining fragment to the kerr. A bite for him and a bite for me, growls the vagabond. There ain't a jail in England where I shouldn't get a better supper than I can get as a free man. Liberty's sweet, says some folks. Not for starving stomachs, says I. Liberty's bitter when it only means you're free to starve and rot as we are. Hey, Tim! Tim stands on end and licks the wanderer's face. It is only a dog's tongue, but the most loving salute Humphrey Vargas is likely to get in this life. Vargas picks himself up stiffly, for he is sixty years old and tired and foot sore, from the bank where he has been sitting on a cushion of fallen leaves, and begins to look about him in the grey dusk. Why, if it ain't the blessed spot, he exclaims. There's the polar oak, and the pool just inside the edge. And there's the path across the corpse, yonder to Blatchmarden. No mistake about it, this is the spot. Twenty year ago to-day, twenty year ago, and it all comes back to me as if it was yesterday. I'm not much of a want to remember days and years, but I shall never forget that day, nor that year, nor this place. He clambered up the bank, and looked about him, peering through the dusk across the meadows yonder, with their tangled hedges and tall timber, an old-fashioned picturesque landscape, neither improved nor disfigured by high farming. On the other side of the narrow road, for this village of Osthorpe was off the king's highway, a hamlet approached by rustic lanes, there was only the mysterious darkness of the wood. I know that there, polared oak, and I can swear to that there a bit of water, said Vargas. I've seen the place too often in my dreams to forget it when I'm awake. And now, come on, Tim, you and me are going to sleep under a roof tonight. I'm glad though I don't know about you, maybe they refuse to take you in, old chap. But we'll try to work it. We'll try to work it, Tim. He shouldered his stick, and trudged on resolutely. Hardly over a mile he muttered to himself. I can do that. The dog crawled by his side, dead lame. Vargas would have been lameer than the cur, but for that power of will which made the man a little higher than the dog. The lane was lonely enough for the first half-mile. Then came a solitary cottage on a knoll above the roadway, with its row of beehives against the darkling sky, and its cheerful fire-glow shining across the lane. Then a couple of cottages together, little better than hovels, but suggestive of warmth and comfort to the wanderer who had no shelter. Then more cottages, four in a row, substantial, respectable dwellings, with a century-old date upon their rough cast front, latticed casements, sloping thatched roofs, with a dormer window in each that looked like an eye under a penthouse brow. Here again was the comfortable fire-glow shining through lattice and half-open door, a glimpse of rustic luxury inside, a neatly swept half, a singing kettle, a little round table with cups and saucers, all twinkling in the fire-light, and a big brown loaf. Far away, at the end of a long lane of vanished years, Vargas saw the picture of just such a cottage interior, and himself coming home to it, a respectable member of society, earning his sixteen shillings a week manfully, and keeping a wife and five children. He remembered the flaxen heads and rosy cheeks in the ruddy light of the wood fire, the snugness of the cottage at sixpence a week, with a patch of potato-ground and half a dozen apple-trees behind it. Was that contented, respectable chap me? he asked himself, wonderingly. Here are the lights of Osthorpe, not many or brilliant, a feeble ray from the village shop, a glimmer in the school-house windows, a cheery light shining through the red curtain at the sugar-loaves in, where three wooden sugar-loaves, pendant from a signpost in the road, are swinging in the north-east wind. A light yonder from the lodge window by the gate of Fairview, Sir Everard-Courtney's place. Vargas stood and looked up and down the village street, if that could be called a street, which was verily a wide open road, with a farm-house on one side, a few scattered cottages on the other, further on a pond, and a half-dozen more cottages, culminating in a shop at a corner opposite the school-house, and beyond that, facing down the road, which here turned off at a sharp angle, the village in, with its three sugar-loaves groaning and creaking in the wind. The church, an old stone barn, which looked as if it had been begun without any definite idea, and abandoned by an architect who didn't know how to finish it, stood apart in the midst of fields, and had altogether an accidental air. Vargas knew the place as well as he knew himself, though it was twenty years to-night since he had set foot on that quiet road. He saw that an old cottage or two which he remembered had tumbled down or disappeared somehow, and that a couple of new cottages had been built. He saw the sugar-loaves swinging as they had swung above his head many a time, on summer evenings, when he had stood among the village quid-nunks, settling the fates of empires. The red curtain had faded a little, perhaps. There was a stout limb lopped from one of the three tall poplars, but the old house had the same air of thrift and prosperity as of your. Humphrey Vargas explored the bottom of his breecher's pocket with careful fingers, in the faint hope of finding a forgotten penny. But those pockets were positively empty. There was no delusion. Bite, nor sup, save from charity or official relief, was not for Humphrey to-night. I'll do it. He muttered to himself between his set teeth. It's the last move left to me. I shall be locked up for life, but I shall have bread to eat and a roof to cover me, and my poor old bones won't ache as they ate to-night. Yes, he ejaculated with an oath. I'll do it. He went as far as the sugar-loaves, crept close up to the window, and peeped in through a crack in the crimson curtain. A man was sitting by the fire smoking a long clay pipe. Two more sat apart at a table drinking beer. A creature who looked little better than a tramp lay asleep, stretched full-length upon a bench by the white-washed wall. But an empty plate and mug on the table beside him showed that he had patronised the house before he took his rest, and a well-filled bundle, which served as a pillow for his tousled head, indicated his claim to be considered a respectable member of society. The picture, humble as it was, a sanded floor, deal tables, kitchen, fireplace, filled Vargas with envy. He went in at the open door. The landlord was sitting in his snug bar, reading yesterday's paper. Who's the magistrate here about, mate? asked Vargas. Oh, you'd better keep out of his way! answered the landlord. He's a mark on tramps. Just you keep your advice till you're asked for it, growled Vargas. I want to know the magistrate's name and where I can find him. That's all I want. I suppose you're going to give yourself in charge, said the landlord ironically. I am? Oh, you'd better go and tell that to the marines, my friend. Our magistrate is Sir Everard Courtney, the owner of Fairview. You'll see the lodge gate at the end of the street. There isn't a finer gentleman in the county, nor one that's kinder to his tenants and servants, but he's as hard as nails when it comes to such cattle as you. I ain't afraid of him, answered Vargas. I say landlord, do you happen to know anyone who wants a dog? Oh, that depends on circumstances. If the dogs are good, bred and handsome, and well-educated, and to be ad for nothing, I might find you a customer. Well, the dog ain't handsome, but he's as true as steel, replied Vargas, and you may have him for—he was going to say for nothing, but changed his mind—for a mug of beer. And here he held Timothy aloft by the scruff of his neck, and exhibited the cure to the landlord and a friendly lounger. They both saluted Tim's perfections with a loud guffaw. Oh, thank you, said the landlord. I appreciate the offer, but my conscience wouldn't let me rob you of such a valuable specimen. Keep him against the next dog-show, or perhaps the Prince of Wales might like to continue the breed. Oh, you may chaff, growled Vargas, but you don't know what you are refusing. There never was such a dog for sense and affection. He's the best house dog in England. Would you ever try him? asked the lounger, who considered himself the village wit. Had you ever a house? Yes, snapped Vargas, but not so big a one as you ought to occupy. Oh, indeed! The county asylum's about the fit for you, seeing that nature has entitled you to a place in the idiot ward. Oh, thank you, said the lounger, with an air of saying something crushing. If I was the head-eater of a comic paper, I should ask you to communicate again. Then you won't have the dog, landlord? pleaded Vargas with a piteous look, first at Tim, and then at the prosperous overfed host. Not unless I add him stuff for a scarecrow, said the landlord. So no, my man, you'd better shear off. Customers of your quality ain't in request at the sugar-loaves. Their favours is not solicited. The man uttered a curse, and turned on his heel. Better in jail than out for such as me. Better underground than above it. He crawled slowly back again, by the way he had come, to the other end of the village. CHAPTER II. OF JUST AS I AM. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Just as I am, by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. CHAPTER II. FATHER AND DAUGHTER Fairview was one of those places which suggested at a glance old established respectability and a long line of ancestry, a race that has taken deep root in the soil. It was not a grand-house or a show-house. It had a snug and even homely air, as of a house meant to withstand the ravages of time and weather, rather than to show off its architectural beauty under an Italian sky. It was a Tudor house, with heavy mullioned windows, huge central chimney stacks, and many gables. It was a long, low house, with a broad terrace in front of it, and below the terrace a stiff Italian garden, with a round pond and fountain in the middle, and beyond the garden a fair expanse of undulating green-sward, richly timbered. The pond and the fountain were as old as the house, and the goldfish that splashed about in the water were popularly supposed to be of the same date, and to have seen Queen Elizabeth when she spent a night at Fairview in one of her royal progresses. There were people of a radical turn of mind who disbelieved in Queen Elizabeth's visit to Fairview, but there was the old, carved oak bedstead which had been set up for her a special accommodation, and there were the cramazes set in curtains, faded to a dull brick dust hue, which had sheltered her august person from the night there. Time had toned down every colour inside and outside the good old house to mellowest half-tints. Brick and stone had assumed all those varying shades of purple and grey, red and brown, which time and the lycan tribe give to old houses. There had been no restoration or renovation, but all things had been kept in exquisite order from the beginning of time, for the courtiers were one of the most respectable families in the county. Nobody had ever been able to say that the court near state was dipped. No one had ever hinted at an undue felling of timber. The small park, or Chase, as Sir Everard preferred to call it, could boast some of the finest trees within fifty miles. The home farm was a model of advanced farming, every cow a picture, every cart horse worthy of a prize medal. Even the pigs were the aristocracy of the porker tribe. The courtiers were not among the wealthiest of the land, but they had never been poor. That was their great merit. From the time when Jasper Courtney, the lawyer, chosen companion and favourite of Francis Bacon, bought the old monastic lands of Fairview for a song, until this present day, there had been no reprobate or prodigal to tarnish the family shield or to diminish the estate. These courtiers are the younger branch of the good old Devonian family tree, had thriven and flourished in their day or show home. They had married always respectably, sometimes profitably. They had affected the grave at professions, and had won fame in the senate and on the bench, rather than in the more adventurous careers of soldier or sailor. They had been men of considerable culture, handing down a certain pride and stateliness of mind and mean from sire to son, as if it had been a tangible heritage. They had for the most part married late in life, and had not left large families, and now the race of the Fairview courtiers had dwindled to two persons, Sir Everard Courtney and his only child, Dulci Bella, otherwise and always known as Dulci. Tonight, while the north-east wind was stripping off the ruddy beach-leaves and bending the long level branches of the cedars, the low-ceiling, panelled parlor at the end of the house, looking out upon dark shrubberies, was the picture of homely, old-fashioned comfort. It was Dulci's room, the room where she had studied with governors and masters during the studious period of her life, and where she was now sovereign mistress, free to improve each shining hour, like the bees, or to waste her time like the butterflies, just as inclination prompted. The old furniture had been enlivened by various modern luxuries and elegances in accordance with Dulci's taste. The black oak-chimly piece presented a kaleidoscopic variety of colour. Pots and pans, cups and saucers, and platters of Dulci's painting or Dulci's purchasing, gleamed from the somber old woodwork, enriched with many a garland and festoon by the chisels of dead and gone carvers. There were two old ebony cabinets crowded with toys and crockery of Dulci's collecting. The chair-covers were of Dulci's working, and blossomed all over with woodland and meadow flowers on a drab ground, for she was as dexterous with the needle as with pencil. Here, in front of the broad square window, stood Dulci's piano, a modern antique in ebony and brass, Sir Everard's last New Year's gift, to a daughter for whom he deemed nothing too beautiful or too costly. Two pictures and two only adorned the dark, dull walls. One, the portrait of Dulci's mother. The other, a striking likeness of Sir Everard Courtney at nine and twenty years of age. He was now fifty. In front of the wide old fireplace, where the logs were burning merrily, stood a little Jimcrack table, and on the table a silver kettle and quaint Japanese tea-service, all red and yellow. Dulci had been making afternoon tea for her father and a visitor, and now tea was over, and her father was sitting in the big arm-chair on one side of the hearth, with the visitor opposite, while Dulci herself sat on a low stool in front of the blaze, which glittered and sparkled upon the pale gold of her wavy hair. She sat looking at the fire with her lovely blue eyes, the bluest and sweetest eyes that Morton Blake had ever looked upon. This was her twentieth birthday, but the girlishness of her slender form and the childlike innocence of her countenance gave the impression of extreme youth. A stranger would have thought Dulci at most sixteen. Her life had been so sheltered and protected, so free from worldly care and all the hard-bitter knowledge which worldly care brings with it, that the passing years had left no impression on the fair young face. She was as frank and girlish in mind and manner as she had been seven years ago in her nursery. Time had brought her new graces and accomplishments without taking from her this supreme grace of a childlike simplicity. This was her birthday, and she was spending it quietly and gravely, sitting at the feet of the father who idolised her, and whose love she returned in fullest measure. There was a reason why Dulci's birthday should never be marked by festivity or rejoicing of any kind. It was the saddest day of the year for Sir Everard Courtney, for close upon the stroke of midnight on that never-to-be-forgotten twentieth of October, and within an hour of her baby's birth, his young wife had died. They had been married little more than a year. Lady Courtney had been one of the bells of the county, the daughter of a duke's younger son, and a bishop's portionless niece, with no fortune but her lovely face and richly gifted nature. Sir Everard had won her against a host of rivals, and he had been an adoring husband. And after little more than a year of wedded happiness, sunshine without a cloud, as those who judged had best known husband and wife, death had snatched her from him, and he had been left alone in a blank and desolate world, for at this time he counted the baby's daughter as nothing. He'll marry again, said society, as represented by the parents of marriageable daughters. So good-looking, and in the prime of life. Of course he'll marry again. It would be absolutely sinful if he didn't. Sir Everard disappointed society, and especially the mothers of attractive daughters, by leaving England the day after his wife's funeral. He led a roving life in the wildest part of Europe for the next seven years, while Delcibella was waxing lovely and sagacious under the care of a married aunt in a faraway Welsh vicarage. And then he came home all of a sudden, and went to look at his daughter. She was a childish image of his dead wife, and that set his wounded heart bleeding afresh, but she was so fair and so loving that he grew by degrees to find comfort in her innocent companionship. And after spending an idle summer among the Welsh hills, whipping romantic waters for trout, reading and brooding in fair solitudes, he said one day, Delci, we'll go home, and you shall keep house for me and make my life happy. He carried out this plan to the letter. The seven-year-old baby was practically mistress of Fairview. The life he lived was the life Delci liked. His garden, his stables, his hot-houses, all were regulated to please that girlish fancy. The servants were referred to Delci for orders. Delci had a governess, and governed the governess. If the child had been of a selfish disposition, she would have grown up an extrable tyrant. But as she had a nature of inexhaustible sweetness, she only grew preternaturally grave and wise, with a childish old fashionness that was delightful. And so she grew, and flourished, and blossomed under her father's eye, growing nearer to his heart every day, learning every accomplishment that could minister to his pleasure, soothing him when he was weary, amusing him when he was inclined to be gay, and reading to him, writing his letters when he was lazy, nursing him when he was ill, more devoted than one wife in a hundred or one daughter in a thousand. They lived very much by themselves, this father and daughter, mixing in county society only so far as they were obliged. So Everard liked to be alone, and Delci liked whatever he liked. They went abroad together every summer, and all the rest of the year they lived in the good old house, of which Delci never tired. The quiet winter evenings by the fireside, with book or drawing-board, work or music, never wearied her. To be with her father was perfect happiness, and who need seek variety in perfect happiness. She and her father had the same tastes, the same inclinations. They both loved art and music, they both had a passion for books. There were books everywhere at Fairview, books in every variety of rich and somber and delicate binding. So Everard and his daughter were connoisseurs in bindings, books in their homely cloth or paper covers, waiting promotion upon merits. Delci Bella had read much and wisely for a young woman of twenty. But not all the books in the Bodleian would ever have made Delci strong-minded or blue. Culture left her simple and natural as a child who has never learned its alphabet. Culture with Delci meant verily sweetness and light. Of late there had been one very constant visitor at Fairview, a visitor who now ranked almost as a member of the family. This was Morton Blake of Tangly Manor, who had met Delci Bella two years ago at a flower show, and fallen in love with her on the spot. At least this was what he told her six months afterwards, when after meeting her everywhere she went, and calling at Fairview as often as he decently could, he asked her to be his wife. Delci told her father of this offer and confessed her willingness to accept it, as freely as she had told him her every thought and fancy hitherto. But for the first time in her life she found that indulgent father opposed to her. He would not hear of Morton Blake as a husband for his daughter. He had no specific objection to offer to the match. The man was fairly well born, very well bred, good looking, well off. So Everard could only say, He is not the man I should choose for you. If you wish to please me, you will not marry Morton Blake. For a daughter who so loved and had been so beloved, this expression of her father's desire was enough. Then I shall not marry him, dear father, she said, and she never more mentioned Blake's name, though he can try to force himself upon her presence several times, and urged his suit with passion and persistence. But the father saw his child's cheek grow pale, and her eye hollow. He saw a hundred signs and tokens, not willingly betrayed, of growing unhappiness. And one evening when they had been sitting by the fire for a long time in pensive silence, he drew Delci onto his knee and turned the sweet sad face towards the lamplight. My dearest pet, you are unhappy, he said. It's nothing, papa. It will pass away. My own dear love answer me truly. Does the happiness of your life hang upon this marriage with Morton Blake? She trembled slightly and turned deadly pale, but she answered as honestly and fearlessly as she had answered her father's every question hitherto. I'm afraid it does, father. I have tried to forget him. I have tried to put the thought of him out of my life. But I can't do it. Then you shall marry him, said Sir Everard. End of Chapter 2 Chapter 3 of Just As I Am This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Just As I Am by Mary Elizabeth Braddon Chapter 3 After Twenty Years You shall marry him, said Sir Everard, and so Morton and Delcibella were engaged. The fair, flower-like girl and the dark-eyed, grave young man, full of the sense of life's duties and responsibilities, a man who from boyhood upwards had taken life earnestly and had cared little for pleasure. Strange, said the Honourable Mrs Aspinall of Aspinall Towers, who was the leading voice in the chorus of Countess Society. I remember Mr Blake's father being among Alice Rothney's admirers, but Lord York would not hear of such a thing, and the mother was equally opposed to it. Oh, poor Lady Courtney! sighed Mrs Aspinall's visitor, young Mrs Kibble, a struggling curate's wife, who only knew of these great people by hearsay. She was very lovely, was she not? Lovely! cried Mrs Aspinall. We don't see such beauty nowadays. These young persons, whose photographs obtrude themselves upon us everywhere, are mere dolls in comparison. Girls had very little help from dress in my time, Mrs Kibble. There were no wrigglings and twistings of the figure to show off the set of a train. No side glances under Devonshire hats. No twisting of a handsome throat to sniff a rose pinned on the shoulder. No posturing behind big fans. A young woman's gown was cut straight up and down like a flower sack. She had a bit of lace round her shoulders that was called a bertha. She had a camellia stuck in her hair, and she walked with her feet on the ground, instead of balancing herself upon a three-inch heel, a corn, and a bunion, as girls do nowadays. Some young women wore pink and some wore blue, and a great many more wore white. If there was a girl dressed in yellow, people stared at her, and that was a ballroom. How uninteresting, said Mrs Kibble, who had been plotting and planning for the last week how to do up her cheap black silk with Nottingham lace in the exact style of Mrs Aspinall's last confection from Worth. And in such a gown as that, Alice Rothney was the sign of your of every eye. Yes, Blake was desperately in love with her. He was a widower with three children belonging to the mercantile classes, only one generation removed from a foundry, not at all the kind of man that Lord George Rothney would be likely to approve of as a husband for his beautiful daughter. There were three daughters, I believe, but neither of the sisters could compare with Alice. Did the young lady care for him? asked Mrs Kibble, deeply interested, and gratified that Mrs Aspinall should condescend to talk so much, her duty calls at the towers being generally of an uphill character. Of course not. Alice was an errant flirt, and knew her own value. She led on Blake as she led others on, and then accepted Sir Everard Courtney and laughed at her admires. She cared no more for breaking hearts than you care for breaking eggs when you make a pudding. Concluded Mrs Aspinall taking for granted that the curate's wife did make puddings. The Blake's belonged to the mercantile classes. This no doubt was the reason why Sir Everard Courtney, who had much pride of race, had opposed his daughter's marriage with Morton. Jeffrey Blake, Morton's grandfather, had made his money at Blackford, the big manufacturing town within thirty miles of Osthorpe. He had come up from the north, a penniless youth with his clothes in a small deal box, and an invention for improving upon the existing method of smelting ore in his head. It had been hard work for him to get any one to hear of his new process, harder still to get it adopted, hardest of all to get it recognised as his, and to get rewarded for it. But there was a vein of doggedness in the Blake family that made them conquerors in every struggle, and Jeffrey Blake pegged along the hard road of industrious poverty till he came to the Temple of Fortune. Once there the goddess treated him kindly. He died a millionaire, leaving two sons, the elder of whom inherited the bulk of his father's property and carried on the ironworks, while the younger got forty thousand pounds in the funds, an estate called Tangley Manor, which was worth thirty thousand more, and turned country squire. This was Walter Blake, Morton's father. He married a rural dean's daughter, who died six years after their marriage, leaving him with three children. He led a steady, reputable life, and was popular in his district. He hunted and shot a great deal, and farmed a little, and visited everybody worth visiting in the county. And in the prime and heyday of life, when his son Morton was just ten years old, he was foully murdered one October evening in the lane leading to Osthorpe, as he rode home from the hunt. This direful event happened on the very day of Dulce's birth, so Morton, as well as his sweetheart, had reason to regard the twentieth of October as a melancholy anniversary. This did not prevent the lovers being quietly happy together, as they sat by the fire, while the north wind rattled the casements, and rung groans as of remonstrance from the rocking elm branches. Oh, what a wintry night! exclaimed Dulce. I must put my warm cloaks in hand directly. If this weather is going to last, the children will want them ever so long before Christmas. All the village children were under Dulce's protection. She made them cloaks and hoods for winter. She gave them smart hats and tippets for summer. She taught in the Sunday school, and gave grand entertainments of tea and buns on the lawn, where the cedars had been growing ever since John Evelyn's time. Children and mothers and old women were all more or less in Dulce's care. There was never sickness in the village without her knowing of it and ministering to the sufferer. Seldom a coffin for which her fair hands did not weave a wreath of hot-house flowers. Dulce, Dulce, how would this world get on without you? said Morton, smiling at her earnestness. Oh, I should be no more missed than a raindrop that falls into the sea! answered Dulce, except by my father, and I suppose you would feel a want of something for the first day or two? Day or two would be all my life, Dulce. She had edged her stool away from her father's feet to Morton's, so they, too, were in a manner alone together, talking in subdued voices, whilst her everard sat looking dreamily at the fire, absorbed in thought. There never was a happier picture of domestic life. The girl's fair head nestling closely against her lover's arm, as it lay on the velvet cushion of his chair, Morton's earnest face looking down at her, a face full of power, with marked features, an open brow, curly brown hair, and thoughtful grey eyes. The father in his low, deep chair on the other side of the hearth, a man still in the prime and vigour of life, with a profile as delicately chiseled as a cameo, clear olive complexion, eyes of a darkly luminous grey, hair and beard like Hamlet's father's, a sable, silvered, but eyebrows and lashes still as black as night. The face was at once handsome and remarkable. The form of forehead and skull promised a nature rich in fine qualities, benevolent, large-minded, and intellectual. Dulce might well be proud of such a father. The white hand with tapering fingers resting on the tawny velvet elbow of the chair would have been beautiful even in a woman, yet it was a strong and muscular hand with all, and had pulled stroke on the ISIS thirty years ago, and had been as true on the trigger of a rifle as the rugged paw of a Texan freebooter. These quiet evenings were ordinarily periods of perfect repose and happiness for Sir Everett Courtney. But on this one day of the year he was always thoughtful, and sometimes moody and depressed. If he could by any means have been beguiled into forgetting the date until the day was over and done with, he might, for chance, have been spared the pain of sad memories. But modern civilisation does not permit such oblivion. There, on his newspapers, on his letters, the date stared him in the face and compelled him to remember. Dulce was not unmindful of her father even when she seemed most engrossed by her lover's conversation. She stole a little look at him now and then, and presently rose from her low seat, and went softly to the piano. She knew that pathetic music had a soothing influence upon Sir Everett, even when his own thoughts were saddest. She played one of Chopin's dreamiest nocturnes, a melody which seemed the plaintiff whisper of a tender regret, a mournful yet caressing strain, as of one who loved the very sorrow that consumed him. Music with Dulce was a gift rather than an accomplishment. There was soul in her fingers from the time she first touched the piano. Expression with her was thought and feeling, not a mechanical adjustment of fingertips and mathematical gradation from loud to soft. She had been carefully taught and trained to interpret her favourite composers. But in whatever she played, Beethoven, Mozart, Mendelssohn and Chopin, there was always something of Dulce's very self, an individual soul interwoven with every phrase. She played on, passing from one nocturne to another, and then to the swelling cords of one of Beethoven's sonatas, while the shadows deepened in the room, and the logs dropped into ashes on the hearth. Suddenly the door was softly opened, and the butler came in. There's a man in the office, Sir Everard, who wishes to see you on particular business. He's got a statement to make, he says. Sir Everard started up at the summons, thoroughly awakened out of his reverie. If there was one thing upon which he was more severe with himself than another, it was in the strict performance of his magisterial duties. He was a man of culture, loving books and art, and all the fairest things in life, a man to whom petty sessions and rural politics must need to be in abomination, yet he loved order so well that he had willingly undertaken the office of magistrate, and once having put his hand to the plow, had never wavered. He was unerringly just, but he did not lean to the side of mercy, and the villagers thought him a draco. What kind of man? Looks like a tramp, Sir Everard. What can he want? Parish relief, I suppose. He should go to the overseer. Oh, so I told him, Sir Everard, thinking it might be that. But it isn't. He says he wants to give himself up. Give himself up? Yes, Sir Everard, for a murder committed twenty years ago. Morton Blake started up, pale in the firelight. A man whose father had been murdered twenty years ago, on that very day, was not likely to hear such a statement calmly. Twenty years ago, he cried, why, this man must be my father's murderer. Let me see him. Let me—my dear Morton, don't agitate yourself. Remonstrated, Sir Everard, quietly. Leave me. There is no reason. I know so well what this kind of thing means. Some idle, drunken, poaching, Rick-burning vagabond, who has run the gamut of rural crime, and drunk away the better part of his brains, and takes it into his head to make his name famous, by handing himself over to justice for the one solitary crime of which he is not guilty. A night in the lock-up at Highclair will bring him to his senses, and to tomorrow morning he'll be whining his recantation. But the date, exclaimed Morton, strongly agitated. Twenty years ago, this very day, mere coincidence, returns Sir Everard lightly. I daresay this vagabond never heard of your poor father, living or dead. I'll soon get rid of the ruffian. Is the lamp lighted in the office, Scroop? Yes, Sir Everard, and there's a good fire. I'll come back to us directly, you've done with the man, won't you, papa? pleaded Dulcy, accompanying her father to the door. Yes, dear, if you wish it. Oh, I do very much wish it. If you dispose of your visitor quickly, we can have just a quarter of an hour's chat before the warning bell rings. You won't be too hard upon this poor ignorant creature, will you, dear father? urged Dulcy, who had always heard gentle prayer for infinite mercy to rogues and vagabonds. This would have had an easy time of it if Miss Courtney had sat in the magistrate's chair. Her father kissed her, and murmured a loving word or two, but promised nothing. And then Dulcy, with a regretful sigh that there should be so much sin and sorrow in the world, went back to the hearth, where Morton stood looking down at the logs with fixed and gloomy brow. She laid her hand lightly on his shoulder, but he did not feel or did not heed the touch. Oh, dear Morton, she said, I am sorry this should have moved you so deeply. I'm always moved when I think of my father's death. Do you suppose it was out of my mind on this day, at this hour, the very hour in which he was riding quietly homeward from the hunt, riding homeward but never to reach home alive? Do you think I can forget, Dulcy, that I can ever forget how he died and that his murderer has never been discovered? If I thought the man in your father's office at this moment had hand or part in that deed, I don't think the restraint of civilisation would be strong enough to prevent me rushing to that room and flying at his throat like a bulldog. There was something of the bulldog in his look as he spoke, the gloomy yet resolute eye, the powerful jaw, the appearance of reserved power, every muscle braced for a spring. Ever since I can remember, I have had one wish always uppermost in my mind—the desire to find myself face to face with the man who killed my father. Great Heaven, think that he may now, on this twentieth anniversary of the murder, be standing within fifty yards of me. Dulcy, why should I not go to your father's office? Why should I not hear what the scoundrel has to say? For a hundred reasons—first, because you are in a most un-christian state of mind. Un-christian, muttered Blake, is it un-christian to hate the man who murdered my father? And, would be likely to do some act which you might repent all the rest of your life, you heard what my father said, Morton? Be sure he knows what he's talking about. He's had thirteen years' experience of these people. The man will not be able to deceive him. He will have justice, rigid justice. I know that too well, for I have so often had to plead for mercy in vain. And I'm to wait here for an indefinite time, said Morton, turning from her with an impatient gesture, and walking up and down the room. What, while a conversation which may be life or death for me is being carried on in my absence? Never before had he spoken so roughly to Dulcy. The change startled her, as when the glow and glory of a summer day turns all at once to cloud and storm. Some girls in Dulcy's position would have resented the rudeness of the lover. She thought only of the son's devotion to the dead father. She stole to his side, and put her arm through his, and laid her head upon his shoulder. You will not have long to wait, dear Morton. My father manages these people so well. Only be patient for a little while. Chapter 4 of Just As I Am This is a LibriVox recording, all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Just As I Am by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Chapter 4 A Willful Man Must Have His Way The magistrate's office was a panelled room which had been a private chapel in the days when country gentlemen of some standing kept their chaplains. It was a large and lofty apartment, but had a look of gloom and a chilly atmosphere upon this October evening, despite the coal fire which burned in the large grate at one end of the room. The grate was recessed in a cavernous chimney, and the greater part of the heat went up to the autumn skies. Sir Everard's writing-table stood in front of the hearth, furnished with a pair of shaded moderator lamps which threw all their light on the table, and left the magistrate's face in shadow. Sir Everard loved a subdued light and hated the glare of gas or unshaded lamps of any kind. He had the eye of a hawk, and could see as well in this half-light as most people can in the broad day. Humphrey Vargas stood a little away from the writing-table, a gaunt, clumsy figure, his arms hanging at his sides, his broad hands clenching and unclenching themselves with a nervous movement now and then. His dog crouched at his side. The footman had tried to prevent the entrance of that mongrel to the magistrate's room, but Vargas had insisted. Where I go, my dog goes, he said. You can't part us till you hang, one-unners. So there the dog was, quiet but watchful, evidently holding himself on the defensive, like a dog who knew he belonged to the criminal classes. Well, sir, began the magistrate, seated in his roomy arm-chair, not a luxurious or effeminate chair by any means, but the severest Pollard Oak and dark green Morocco. Well, sir, what have you to say to me? I want to give myself in charge. Oh, indeed! You are mighty conscientious all of a sudden. And, pray, which of your many crimes do you desire to expiate? He looked at the man keenly, though he spoke lightly, supposing he had to deal with some drunken vagabond who was only half in earnest. To his surprise, however, this man did not look drunk. His gaunt, frame and deeply sunken cheeks suggested starvation rather than riotous living. His eyes had a steady look, he stood firm upon his feet, and spoke like a man who had come there with a settled purpose. I want to give myself up for a murder I did twenty year ago—twenty year ago this blessed day—the murder of Mr. Blake. Sir Everard looked at him long and steadily, looked at him as if he would pluck out the heart of his mystery, penetrate to the very bottom of his soul. Oh, he said at last with startling coolness, you're the man are you? I thought the murderer would turn up sooner or later, but I did not suppose he would be self-accused. Come, sir, tell me your story, as plainly and as briefly as you can, and when I've written it down I shall read it over to you in the presence of a witness, and you must sign your name to it. Do you understand? Yes, answered Vargas, unmoved. Well, begin, said the magistrate, dipping a pen in the ink and looking up at the self-accused with quiet intentness. Well, Sir Everard, things had gone bad with me that year—everything. My wife had died, and when she was gone I went wrong altogether. It was the drink, I suppose. Perhaps I'd been a little wild in my ways while she was alive, but it wasn't anything to talk about, and she kept home over my head, though we'd had our troubles, too. But when she was in the churchyard yonder, where she's lying now, with the jerk of his head in the direction of the village, I took to the pubs. There were the only places where I found warmth and company, and I wasted my wages on drink till the children was barefoot, and then finding myself out of work one morning, and the little ones nigh upon starving, I give it up all together and run away. Leaving your children to the work-house? I couldn't have left them to a better home. The girls was brought up decently and sent to service, and the boys was taught trades. It's a deal more than I could have done for them. Well, Sir Everard, I turned my back upon my native place, and just turned waif and stray, doing an odd job of plaster in here, for I'm a plasterer by trade, and a spell of amyke in there, and a week or two at hot picking when the season came around, until somehow or other I worked my way back here, drifted like, strayed as a dog strays, for I didn't want to come. I'd no home to come to, no friend to give me a shelter, and I couldn't afford to show at the work-house where my innocent orphans were ever so much better off without a father. Sir Everard had made the briefest note of this preliminary statement. The important disclosure was to come. Well, Sir, one October day I finds myself standing under a signpost in a wild bit of country, half wood, half heath, where three roads met. I'm blessed if I knew until that moment when I looked up and spied the name on the signpost, how near I'd come to the old place. I knew I was in the county, and the hills and wood had the look of home somehow, but I didn't think I was half as near as I was. I seem to come all over of a shiver, when I found I was only six miles from the union where those blessed kids was being brought up in the fear of the Lord. I'd had no breakfast. I had exactly three apens in my pocket and a screw of tobacco, and I knew I was a good two mile from any place where I could buy a peneth of beer. It was a mild still day, and the roads and lanes was mucky and soft, just the day for the scent to lie well. I'd seen the redcoats in the distance on the slope of the hill, and I didn't want to meet none of them, for the auntsmen would have known me, seeing as I'd run with the hounds and open gates in old times when I was a lad. So I just crept into the wood-hard bay, and laid down in the oler of an old oak, where I was as warm as a toast among the moss and withered leaves, and where I laid and smoked my pipe for a couple of hours at a stretch to quiet my empty inside. I didn't come out till it was drawn toward dusk. I'd heard the hounds giving tongue, and the auntsmen's cry more than once while I laid there, as they wound and beat about wood and heath. But I thought I could get quietly back to the coach road without meeting any one as would recognise me in the dusk. I took a short cut across the fields, meaning to get back to the eye-road a mile or so from Arsthorpe on the way to Eye Clear, and keep clear of the village altogether. I'd been on the tramp above a week since I left Kent, and I'd slept under edges and A-stacks, and there was pains in every blessed bone in my body that gnawed like rats. I had my bit of a bundle swung on a cudgel over my shoulder, and I trudged on somehow, while the crows went wheeling across the sky, which was turning yellow though there hadn't been not one blessed glimmer of sunshine all day. Well, you see, sir, I trudged along the muddy road, and I was just in that kind of temper when the devil gets her grip upon a man, and can make him do exactly as he likes. I was hungry and thirsty and footsaw, but I felt more than hunger and thirst was a raging hate against them as wasn't, and never had been, nor never was likely to be famished and footsawed and without a penny. Why should they have all the good things, and I all the bad things of this life? I suppose I ain't the first man has asked himself that question, and I don't think I shall be the last. But I walks on with such thoughts in my head till I comes to the lane that leads from Osthorpe to Hyde Clear, hard by Blatch-Murdenwood, and presently I is the steady tramp of horses hooves walking along the soft road, and I stands aside to let the rider go by, thinking he might be good for a sixpence. It's a gentleman in a red coat, and I begins my sorrowful tale, how I had a sick wife and seven small children, and not a penny to buy bread. But before I gets half-way through, I looks up into his face and recognizes him for my old enemy, Mr. Blake. He must turn me off his estate, and out of house and home, for a bit of a mistake made by a lurchard-dog as I used to keep, with regard to some pheasants as he set particular store by. I knows him, and he knows me. Get out of my road, you vagabondy craze. I won't give you sixpence to save you and all your brood from starving. Oh, he looked more lansom in his red coat and striped velvet wesket, and there was his thick gold watch chain and seals, swinging as he moved, and shining in the yellow light of the low sky in front of him. He looked a regulus, well he did. That there a watch and chain of his must be worth fifty pounds anywhere I thought, and I dare say his purse is full of sovereigns. For I knowed him to be one of your fine, open-handed gentry, all as ready to give money to them as didn't want it. An old nick took me by the shoulders and gave me a shove, as you might say, and whispered, Pull the proud beggar off his horse, pull him into the mud and brain him. Well, I looked round, there wasn't a mortal in sight. It was getting dark. I should be miles away before anybody knew anything. He was a strong man on a strong horse. Could I do it? While I was hesitating, the devil gives me another shove and whispers, I'll help you, and then I threw down my bundle and clutched over the bridle, and it the arse, a crack of the skull that brought him on his knees in the road, and before Mr. Blake could recover from the shock of the horse falling under him, he and I had closed with each other in a deadly struggle. He was bigger than me, stronger than me, a better man in every way. But old Nick kept his word and stood by me like a gooden. Mr. Blake had only his aunt and crop with a bamboo cane and a leather thong. He cut me a warner across the face with a thong, but I came down on his bare head, for his hat was knocked off at the first go, with a knobbly end of my cudgel. I heard his skull go cracked like a bit of glass, and then he fell backward into the muddy road, and I just dragged him quietly into the ditch and cleaned out his pockets. There was a leather purse full of gold and silver as I hoped, and his watch and chain, and a diamond ring on his little finger. Then I felt I'd done a good day's work, for you see, I didn't know for sure as I'd killed him. Even if that was his skull as I heard go crack, the doctors might lay a bit of metal atop of it and make a sound man of him again. I'd heard teller such things. So I tied the watch and chain and ring and money up in my fogel, and stuffed it all into my bridge's pocket, and caught up my bundle on the edge of my cudgel, and made tracks for the eye-clear road. "'When and where did you dispose of the stolen property?' inquired Sir Everard after a pause. "'At Great Barford, six weeks after Mr. Blake's death. And I suppose this is all you have to tell me?' "'Yes, sir. This year is about all.' Throughout this confession Sir Everard Courtney had sat in a thoughtful attitude, with his left elbow on the table, and his forehead resting on his left hand, while with his right he jotted down an occasional note upon the paper before him. It was not possible for Vargas to see the impression made on the listener's mind by his narrative. "'Come now, my man,' said the magistrate, looking up at him suddenly with a frank friendliness, "'You've told your story very well, and to some ears it might sound like the truth, but it doesn't, to mine. I know what a curious machine the human mind is, and what strange twists it sometimes takes. Don't you think you'd better forget you've told me anything, except that you're hard up and want a knight's lodging?' "'No,' answered Vargas in a surly tone. "'I'm not going from my word. What you took down there, I'll stand by.' "'You will? Have you considered that it's a hanging matter, that you're offering yourself as a candidate for the gallows? I don't feel sure, as a ranger man, after twenty years. You won't find the twenty years make any difference. Besides, it won't altogether murder, you see. When I ate in that crack-older skull, I didn't know as it had been his death. I fear you will hardly find a dale should jury incline to draw such nice distinctions. Mr. Blake was a popular man, and feeling ran high about his murder. I would not give much for your life after that statement of yours has been read before twelve dales, sure men.' "'I'll risk it,' said Vargas doggedly. "'I don't believe they'll hang me. If they do, it'll be end in a life that ain't worth living. Um, get your witness, sir, everard. I want to sign that their deposition.' "'You're an obstinate fool,' exclaimed the baronet angrily, and if I refuse to receive your statement, I suppose you'll go and make the same confession to someone else. I shall go to Iclear as fast as my poor old legs will carry me, which is slow enough, Lord knows, and give myself up to the magistrate there.' "'A willful man must have his way,' said sir everard, ringing a bell which sounded loud and shrill in the outer office. "'Your way is the gallows. Remember that I have warned you, and don't ask me to help you after to-night, for it will be out of my power to do so. Don't come and whine to me when you've changed your mind.' "'I shan't change my mind,' answered Vargas. "'I ain't afraid of that. But as you seem to wish to deal kind by a poor devil, I'll ask your favour. I got a bit of a dog here. He ain't much to look at, but he'll keep your poultry yard clearer rats. Give him an armful of straw or lion and a bit of vitals to eat, and you'll be doing it ten times over to me.' "'He shall be taken care of,' answered sir everard. A manservant appeared in answer to the bell. "'Send for Jackson immediately, and take that dog to the stables. Tell Gilbert he's to be taken care of.' "'God bless you, sir everard,' said Vargas, with moistening eyes. He took the kerr up by the scruff of his neck, pressed his cold muzzle against his own dry lips, and handed him to the servant. "'The constable will be here in ten minutes if he happens to be at home when my messenger calls at his cottage,' said sir everard, addressing himself to Vargas when the servant left the room. "'You have just ten minutes for reflection and repentance. If you don't change your mind in that time, you'll be booked. I'll leave you to reflect.' He went away, leaving the self-accused at perfect liberty to make a bolt of it by the back door if he pleased. Never had sir everard treated a criminal so leniently. This was due to Dulcy's influence, no doubt. CHAPTER V Despite his promise, sir everard did not go back to the drawing-room immediately on leaving his office. He went straight to his study, a cosy room lined with books from floor to ceiling, where he generally spent his mornings. There was a shaded lamp burning on the small round table near the fire, and the red light of the logs was reflected cheerfully on the gay colors of the tiled hearth. Dark green velvet curtains were drawn before the one wide window. Everything suggested snugness and seclusion. Sir everard sank with a weary air into his chair by the half, and lay back with closed eyes, resting from his labors. "'What an obstinate fool the fellow is,' he said to himself, and how strange that this monomania of self-accusation should crop up as often as it does. Yet there's a part of his story that sounds true. The watch and chain were pledged at Great Barford. That fact came out at the time, and the police tried to follow up the clue, ineffectually. The warning bell rang while he sat thinking by the fire, and Sir Everard went upstairs to change his black velvet lounging jacket for evening clothes, leaving Vargas to his fate. Domestic life at Fairview could not be hindered in its quiet course, because a self-accused criminal was anxious to deliver himself over to the law. Vargas' valet was in attendance in his dressing-room, a man of about five and thirty, tall, slim, with insignificant features, and a faded complexion, redeemed by clever-looking grey eyes, a very superior person altogether, and looked up to by the household. His master had picked him up at the gates of the Hotel des Anvelides in Paris, where in an impecunious interval he was trying to earn a franc or two, by acting as a guide to inquiring-minded tourists. He was a man who had seen life under curious aspects. Starting as the scape-grace son of a country-person, he had cut short his university career by a boyish folly, and had then and there turned his back upon what society calls respectability, and what he called Philistinism. He had dug a deepish hole in the paternal purse during his college days, but had made a manly stand against any further dependence upon his father. I am not fit for anything but a wandering life, and I'd better be away from stray abroad than a burden at home," he said. After arriving at this decision, he had enjoyed a varied career as courier, waiter, billiard marker in France and Switzerland, had acquired all sorts of odd out-of-the-way talents, and had finally found himself in Paris without friends or credentials face-to-face with starvation, when Sir Everard Courtney heard his story, believed it, and took him into his service. Never had Master a better servant, or one who seemed more conscientious in the performance of his duties. There is rather a queer character in my office, Stanton, said Sir Everard. He'd better tell Scroop to keep his eye on the plate-room, and tell them to let me know when the constable comes. I shan't want you. Everything necessary to the baronet-toilet had been put ready. The valet retired quietly, and Sir Everard began to dress. He was somewhat slower than he's won't in the process of dressing. Dordled and lingered a little, took things up and laid them down again, with a dreamy, desolate air. Was not this a day full of sad memories? And those memories had been made more vivid by the tramp's confession. He could hardly think about Walter Blake's murder without recalling his wife's untimely death, which had happened on the same day. He was on his knees beside the death-bed when the news was brought to Fairview. At last all was done quickly enough, though he had lingered, and Sir Everard went down to the drawing-room, passing Scroop in the hall as he went. Jackson went to Highclair this afternoon, Sir Everard, said the butler, not expected home before nine o'clock. Gilbert left word that he was to come here directly. Very good! You can keep an eye on that man in my office. He may be a thief. I've turned the key in the door, Sir Everard. That is unnecessary. Go and unlock it at once, and give the fellow a meal of bread and meat. He looks half starved. Morton Blake was sitting alone before the fire when Sir Everard went into the drawing-room. Well, sir, he cried, getting up quickly and going to meet his host, you have kept me a long time in suspense. Was there any truth in my suspicion? Is this man my father's murderer? Pray restrain yourself, Morton. The man is, in my opinion, either mad, or a rogue, who for some occult reason accuses himself of a crime he has not committed. Then he has confessed. He is the man, cried Morton Horsley. Let me see him. Let me hear. My dear Morton, this is a business in which you have no right to interfere. No right? No right? I, the victim's son? Absolutely none. You must wait till the law of the land shall avenge your father's death. If this man has spoken the truth, which I strongly doubt, and if he adhere to his statement by and by, the business will be easy enough, and you may have the satisfaction of seeing him hanged in High Claire jail, and may possibly be a happy man ever afterwards. I shall be a more contented man anyhow, when I know that my father's murderer has been punished, and said Morton resolutely. Well, what is to be done next? The man is, in your office, handcuffed in custody, I suppose? Not yet. I am waiting till Jackson comes home from High Claire. Don't look so savage, Morton. The man is safe enough. He wishes to give himself into custody. He may change his mind and give you the slip. No fear of that. I have told Scroop to look after him, and Scroop has locked him in. Sensible of Scroop. What kind of creature is he, this devil? If I described him at all, I should call him a poor devil. Can't I see him without his knowing it, so that I might identify him if he should escape? I want to have the man's image in my mind. The scoundrel who killed my father in the prime of life and figure, with all the world smiling on him, and all the future full of hope. Can't I see him, Sir Everard? If you like to go round the house and look in at the office window, you may see him plain enough, I daresay. The shutters were not shut when I was there. But there's the bell, and here's Dulcy. You'd better come to dinner. Oh, no! answered Morton, painfully agitated. I can't dine to-night. You must excuse me, Sir Everard. Dulcy! She was standing close at his side, pale and watchful of his face. Forgive me, dear. I must go. I will come back later in the evening, Sir Everard, and hear what has happened. You won't play me false in this, will you? I believe the man has told the truth. I believe that retribution is coming after twenty years. Don't take the matter lightly. Remember my father was your friend. Am I likely to forget that? His face is in my mind to-night. But in a matter of this kind I must not let passion be my guide. However, I have happily very little to do here. I shall hand this fellow over to Jackson the Constable, and then my work is done. But you must be reasonable, Morton. Affection must not make you unjust. Deeply as you must feel your father's death, it could be no satisfaction to you to hang an innocent man. Why do you take it for granted that this man is innocent, Morton demanded impatiently? Simply because he calls himself guilty. Real guilt rarely surrenders liberty and life uncompelled. I have not the least doubt, that after having caused you all this painful agitation and me a good deal of trouble, the fellow will make his recantation to-morrow before the High Claire magistrates. "'Good night,' said Morton shortly. "'Good night, Dulcy.' He scarcely touched the hand she gave him as he passed hurriedly from the room. "'What a miserable birthday!' thought poor Dulcy, as she and her father went across the hall to the dining-room. My birthdays have always been sad, but this is the worst of all.' The father and daughter sat opposite each other at the snug round table, with Morton's empty place between them. There had been no special invitation for today's dinner, but the place was always laid for him when he was in the house. Dulcy gave one sad little look at the vacant chair, and then made believe to go on with her dinner, eating hardly anything. The solemn scroop moved to and fro, with his underling following up and supporting him as it were, and the two servants ministering assiduously to the wants of two people, utterly without appetite or inclination to eat, were an admirable example of domestic comedy in the much-a-do-about-nothing line. From the clear soup to the wild duck, scroop abated no iota of ceremony. Dulcy was longing to be alone with her father, but scroop lingered affectionately by her plate with offers of lemon and cayenne. He insisted on her taking dessert, and when she had refused a bunch of purple grapes, which might have tempted an anchorite, followed her up perseveringly with preserved ginger. He was very particular about the temperature of Sir Everard's claret, and made a good deal of play with the jug before he could bring his mind to the necessity of leaving father and daughter alone. During dinner they had talked very little, and only of indifferent subjects. Dulcy's eyelids were heavy with unshared tears, Sir Everard was grave and absent-minded. But at last, to the girl's infinite relief, scroop and his subordinate withdrew, the latter respectfully drawing the door after him with his foot, and father and daughter were alone. Sir Everard wheeled his chair round, and sat facing the fire. Dulcy crept round to the hearth, and took her favourite place on the fender-stool at his feet, with her bright head resting on the arm of his chair. "'Dearest Father, I want you to tell me a great many things,' she said coaxingly, yet seriously with awe, and her face was full of earnestness as she looked up at him. "'There are some questions I can't ask, Morton. Will it make you very sad if I talk about the past?' "'I'm always sad when I think of the past, Dulcy, whether you talk of it or no can make very little difference. "'I want you to tell me about Morton's father. Was he a good man?' He was a popular man, good-looking, clever, open-handed, that kind of man is generally liked. "'And you liked him?' "'My dear, what a question! He was one of my oldest friends. We were at Rugby and at Cambridge together.' "'Yes, I know, but those friendships do not always last. You might have altered toward each other afterwards. I have sometimes fancied that there was a constraint in your manner when you talked to Morton about his father, or rather when Morton had mentioned his father, for I have seldom heard you speak of him of your own accord. The terrible circumstances of his death make the subject a painful one. Yes, I ought to have understood that, but I have noticed that people get accustomed to any idea, however dreadful, and end by talking of it familiarly, as if it were an everyday event. I could never grow accustomed to the idea of Walter Blake's death. "'That's because you are more sensitive than the common herd of people,' answered his daughter lovingly. "'Tell me, dear father, do you think the man in your office is really the murderer?' "'My love, how can I tell? There are some points in his story which to my mind bear the stamp of improbability. Yet if it be found that he is the man who disposed of the murdered man's property, it will go hard with him to prove himself innocent, supposing that he should wish to get his neck out of the noose into which he has thrust it. Should you be glad if he were found guilty, if it were proved to the satisfaction of everybody that he is the murderer?' asked Delcy, intensely earnest. "'Not glad, dear. Yet it is a good thing that the perpetrator of a great crime should be discovered, even after an interval of many years, that he should be so lashed and goaded by his own conscience as to give himself up to justice. Yes, it must be good. It may serve as a warning to many. Think how sharp the sting of conscience must be when it can goad a man to the surrender of liberty and life.' "'Oh, poor creature!' sighed Delcy, full of pity even for the vilest of mankind. Young and inexperienced as she was, her mind and heart were large enough to comprehend and compassion at all sin and sorrow. He must have been horribly tempted before he could commit such a crime. Was it starvation that drove him to it, do you think?' His plea is something of that kind. Blake had treated him badly, it seems. "'Revenge! Oh, that is a fearful passion,' said Delcy. "'One you will never know, I hope, little one,' answered her father tenderly. "'And now, dear, we will talk no more about painful things. Oh, my poor Delcy, what a sorrowful birthday!' "'Not all to get the sorrowful, dear father. To be with you is enough happiness for me.' "'Is it, Delcy?' asked her father, bending down to look surgingly into the sweet fair face, with frank blue eyes lifted lovingly to meet his own. "'Are you sure of that? Yet if I were to ask you to give up Morton, if you and he were doomed to be parted, your heart would break. Have you not confessed as much as that?' "'Does it seem inconsistent?' she asked. "'Is it impossible to love two people intensely? You have given me to Morton, and I know you would never take your gift back. I'm not afraid of injustice from you. But if such a thing were possible, if you stood on one side and Morton on the other, and I were called upon to choose between my father and my lover, what would you do?' "'I would cleave to you, father. I don't know which is the greater love, but I know which is the more sacred. You're more to me than all the world.' "'Oh, my darling!' cried Sir Everard, bending to kiss the earnest lips.' End of Chapter 5 Chapter 6 of Just as I Am This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Just as I am by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Chapter 6 This Man Killed My Father While the father and daughter sat together by the cheerful home fireside, exchanging confidences full of love and trustfulness, Morton Blake was pacing the shrubbery path alone, his soul at war with all the world. He went round to the back of the house, where the lighted windows of the justice-room shone out upon the misty autumn night. There were no shutters or blinds to hide the scene within. Morton walked close up to the window, and looked in, as at a stage-play. There, at a plain, oaken table in the centre of the large, scantily furnished room, at some distance from Sir Everard's writing-table and armchair, sat the self-accused murderer, eating his supper of bread and meat. A joint and a big home-baked loaf had been set before him, and he had been left alone with the food, no one to measure or stint his meal. He was eating more like a savage beast than a human being, now tearing at a slice of meat, and unknowing at a huge hunch of bread, his eyes shifting uneasily towards the door every other instant, as if he thought the whole thing were too good to be true, and expected momentarily to be interrupted in his feast. A wolf, muttered Morton, scowling at him through the glass. Could any man in his senses doubt this creature's capacity for murder? A mere ravenous beast, a body wanting to be fed, muscles and sinews and flesh and bone craving nutriment, a being without mind or heart or conscience, a creature that would as soon kill as breathe. Strange that remorse can have power over a soul so blunted and brutalised, a nature so gross and low. He stood as if rooted to the spot, watching every look, every movement of the man inside. This man killed my father, he said to himself. This debased wretch wanting only to eat and live, cut short that brave happy life in its flower, laid that handsome head in the dust, and made my boyhood desolate. For the sake of a handful of sovereigns and a few trinkets, that noble life was sacrificed. Devil! he muttered between his set teeth. I am sorry that the law must have you. I would rather my own right hand avenge my father's death. The man et on with undiminished veracity, hacking the joint, mauling the big brown loaf, luxuriating in the plenitude of an unfamiliar luxury. Once and once only he paused in his banquet, and that was to look down at his knee and then along the floor and under the table, wistfully with a regretful sigh. Ah! he wished him had been here, he said. Wouldn't he have enjoyed himself? But he's well off, I'll warrant. That's a reverence of Softon, though folks call him hard. There came a stage in the meal when even the starved wayfarer's hunger was appeased. The joint had shrunk to a bone, the noble loaf was reduced by half, and Humphry Vargas lent back in his chair a contented man. True that he had surrendered his liberty, that fetters and jail were to be his portion, but a possible gallows loomed in the future. The thought of these things troubled him but little. He had filled himself with bread and meat, for the first time in many months he had enjoyed an ample meal. The cautious butler had given him nothing but water to drink, obeying Sir Everard's order in the letter rather than in the spirit. His master had said bread and meat, and he had given the man bread and meat no more and no less. I should have liked a supper-gatter, sighed the tramp, but I blowed myself out pretty fair without it, and I ain't ungrateful. Tomorrow I suppose it'll be skilly in soup, but that'll be a great deal better than hips and oars, and bits of moulded panam stole out of a pigsty. Morton Blake walked away from the window, and strolled slowly round by a shrubberied walk to the broad terrace in front of the house. The moon had risen, and the mists of evening were floating away from the garden and chase and the wide landscape beyond. Fairview stood on high ground, and from the terrace Morton could see Woodland and Valley, the twinkling lights of a low-lying village, and yonder far away to the left on the edge of the horizon, the dimly defined outline of the roofs and steeples of Highclear, the county town. The wind had gone down with the rising of the moon. The air was cold, but Morton was hardly sensible of its chilliness as he walked slowly up and down the terrace, or paused now and then to stand with folded arms, looking across the Italian garden, the velvet lawns and choice timber, to the vaguer world beyond, looking with fixed eyes, which saw no feature of the familiar scene. How cold and indifferent they are, he said to himself. It seems nothing to them, that after all these years my father's murderous stand revealed, and retribution is at hand. Even dulcy would sooner yonder wretch should go scop-free than that he should expiate his crime. I believe she would be weak enough to feel sorry for him. For the first time in his life he was inclined to be angry with his betrothed. For the first time since he had known and loved her, he felt their hopes and interests were divided. How sad she had looked when he left her just now. He seemed to himself hardly to have noticed that tender pleading glance at the time, yet now that one particular look flashed upon his memory, and was as vividly present to his eye as a face in a picture, and that one picture the gem of the gallery. He turned towards the porch, tempted to go back to dulcy, the lighted windows of her favourite room shone out upon the moonlit garden, with the cheerful glow of lamps and fire. He was in no mood for lovers' talk or music or poetry or art, but he wanted to see dulcy again before the evening was over. The whole door was neither locked nor barred against him. He had only to turn the handle and go in. Yet on the point of doing so he changed his mind, and went back to the shrubbery at the end of the house, and round again to the justice-room. When he looked through the window the prisoner was no longer alone. Sir Everard was standing by his writing-table with a paper in his hand, reading its contents aloud, while the local constable respectfully listened, and Vargas stood aloof, twisting his flabby hat in his bony old hands, and quietly awaiting the next turn in that wheel of fortune which had rarely revolved in such a way as to bring him any good. Presently Vargas, at the magistrate's bidding, walked up to the table, and with laborious effort affixed his signature to the deposition that had just been read over to him. His sign-manual was only a cross, but he took as much pains in producing it as if it had been the most perfect thing in autographs. I've got a she-cart at my place, said the constable, who was a bluff rosy cheek-trustic, and I shall soon spin him over to Highcler. You haven't got nothing in the way of firearms or other weapons about you, have you, mate?" he inquired of Vargas, running his hand dexterously over the man's gaunt figure as he spoke, to assure himself that there were no such implements of slaughter concealed under his scanty rags. No, growled Vargas, I don't see where an old scarecrow like me could either revolver or a blunderbuss. There ain't much room in my rotten old togs. The constable clapped a pair of handcuffs upon him with a business-like air, as if there were no malice in the proceeding, and then with a bow to Sir Everad led his prisoner away. Thank God! exclaimed Morton, my mind is easier now that that's done. He ran quickly round to the front of the house, and then to the avenue along which the two men must come, and here in the shadow of the elm trunks he stood and waited for them. They passed him presently, the prisoner walking at a slow and dogged pace, beside the guardian of the village-piece, his head sunk on his breast, his fettered wrists hanging in front of him, his weary old shoulders stooping under the burden of a long life of penury, disrepute, and evil doing. A creature too low for hatred, looked at from a philosopher's point of view, Morton Blake saw in him not the natural product of an imperfect civilisation, but only the murderer of a beloved father, and hated him with unmeasured wrath. He followed the constable and his companion to the village, waited while a methuselor among ponies was harnessed to the sheikart, and saw the official drive briskly along the moonlit lane towards Highclear, with his prisoner sitting anyhow, a high-shouldered heap of degraded humanity at his side. They were past the ditch where my father was found twenty years ago this very night, said Morton. He set off across the field to his own house, pondering as he went along how he was to tell the story of tonight's business at home. Tangley Manor was just a mile and a half from Osthorpe in the opposite direction to Highclear. It was a pleasant walk through country lanes, crossing the London Road about half way from Osthorpe. The estate was large, the land some of the most fertile in the county, for old Geoffrey Blake had never bought a bad thing. There was a good deal of wood which the purchaser had got for a song, but which gave dignity and beauty to the substantial modern mansion which he had built on the site of a picturesque old half-timbered farmhouse. The lighted windows of Tangley Manor house shone upon Morton with a comfortable look, as he walked slowly across the common, which lay between the gates and the coach road. The house stood only a little way back from the common, a lawn and flower beds in front, shrubberies on each side. Encircling the garden and shrubberies there was a wood, where no axe had been heard, say for improvement, for the last fifty years. Old Geoffrey Blake had loved Tangley, and his son Walter, born in the newly erected Manor house, had inherited his father's affection for every tree and every acre. Poor Aunt Dora, sighed Morton, as he drew nearer the house. She will feel it most. She loved him dearly, and mourned him more deeply than any of us. Yes, even than I. For as time went by, and I grew older, I had all the distractions of Rugby and Cambridge, while she sat at home and mourned for him. How shall I tell her? How re-open the old wound, without giving her unspeakable pain? But she must know. The county papers will be full of this business two days hence. End of Chapter 6 Chapter 7 of Just As I Am This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Just As I Am by Mary Elizabeth Braddon Chapter 7 Morton's Womenkind The drawing room at Tangley Manor was as handsome and as interesting as any room can be, which has not been mellowed and sanctified by the passage of centuries. It was a spacious and lofty room, with a noble bay on one side, and three long French windows on the other. There was a fireplace at each end, the white marble mantelpieces low and broad, giving ample space for the display of some exquisite specimens of modern serve, chosen by Geoffrey Blake during one of his holiday visits to Paris, a city which had possessed peculiar interest for his active and inquiring mind. The furniture was in perfect taste, light in form and delicate in colour, simple as befitted a room that was designed rather for daily usage than for stately receptions. There were dwarf bookcases between the windows and on each side of the fireplace, water-coloured drawings on the wall, ferns and flowers wherever space could be found for them. The room wore its most cheerful aspect to-night when Morton entered it after his lonely walk by field and lane and common. Wood fires burned brightly in the two grates, large moderator lamps with coloured shades gave a warm yet subdued light. Four ladies were seated near the fireplace at the further end of the room, in various attitudes, and variously employed. The middle-aged lady, sitting in a low, wide armchair with a lamp and work-basket on the gypsy table before her, was Walter Blake's maiden sister Dorothy, better known in that house as Aunt Dora, the head of the household, respected and beloved by every member of the family, from Morton to the newest comer in the shape of a chubby cheek-scullery maid or a fortnight-old kitten. She was one of those women whose beauty in youth is open to question, but who are undeniably handsome in later life. As a girl Dorothy Blake's face had lacked colour and brightness, her manners had been wanting in animation. Girls with homelier features and more vivid complexions had been admired, where Dorothy's pale and interesting countenance passed unnoticed. But at forty-five Miss Blake's clearly chiseled features and delicate complexion, her slim and graceful figure, made her remarkable among middle-aged women. Her hair had grown grey before she was six and twenty. It had not bleached suddenly in a single night, but within one year of that night of horror, on which Walter Blake's corpse was carried home to Tangley Manor, his sister's dark brown hair had changed to grey. It was now of a silvery hue, which harmonised exquisitely with the pale fair skin and soft hazel eyes. Aunt Dora's gowns always fitted to perfection and were always in the fashion, yet she never wore a garment unbefitting her years. She was not the kind of woman to encase herself in a boating jersey, because the fashion book told her that jerseys were universally worn. The young people of her acquaintance looked up to her as an authority on dress and manners, the arbiter of taste. She loved all beautiful things—pretty girls, delicate colours, flowers, wild and exotic, ferns, hedgerow or hot house, handsome furniture, rich dress, thoroughbred horses. She had taste wide enough to embrace all the delights of life, and yet was not self-indulgent. She would leave the cosy chair beside the gothic fireplace in her luxurious morning-room, to walk three or four miles through muddy lanes in the vilest weather, if by so doing she could give comfort to the afflicted in mind or body. She was the friend and adviser of all the wives, mothers and daughters in the parish. On a corner of the fender-stool in front of the fireplace sat Morton's elder sister, Clementine, otherwise tiny, a delicately-fashioned girl who seemed never to have grown out of childhood, and who was a perpetual outrage to her racier, her strong-minded younger sister, a tall, plump, well-filled-out young woman who looked just as many years too old as tiny looked too young for her age. The sisters were curiously different in character, taste and personal appearance, yet they contrived to be on excellent terms with each other, and only quarrelled in sport. Horatia was playing at chess with a girl who seemed younger than either of Morton's sisters, a girl with soft gray eyes, rippling brown hair, and features with no special claim to beauty, save that the rosy mobile lips were lovely in form and expression, and the teeth perfect in shape and colour. This last was a young lady about whom Deosha's society troubled itself very little. She was rarely included in those invitations to garden parties and afternoon dances, which were sent to the daughters of the house. She was known to be a humble dependent upon Miss Blake, a girl of obscure birth whom that lady had adopted fifteen years ago, an altogether estimable young person in her proper sphere, that sphere being, of course, one of usefulness and not of ornament, a girl born to carry comforts to the sick and poor, and whom one would be surprised to meet in the lanes or on the common, without a basket on her arm, a girl who would be expected to like walking in wet weather, and always to wear thick boots and short petticoats, to be expert in every branch of decorative art, from the fitting up of a baby-basket to the arrangement of a dinner-table, a girl who would be a marvel of handiness in all those small duties that make up the preparation for a grand party, who would work like a slave till the last moment before the arrival of the guests, and who would not feel the faintest desire to mingle with the festive throng. This was the kind of thing which Daelshire Society expected from Elizabeth Hardman, of whose birth and connections it was only vaguely stated that she belonged to factory people at Blackford, and ought in the common course of events herself to be making steel pens or brass buttons. Society, as represented by Mrs Aspinall of the Towers, looked with a disapproving eye on Aunt Dora's adoption of the orphan. These things never turn out well for anybody concerned, said Mrs Aspinall with her superior air, as if she had been by when the foundations of the earth were laid, and had seen the stars marshaled into their places. That girl will be a thorn in Dorothy Blake's side before we are many years older. Meanwhile Elizabeth Hardman was happy enough, though she was left out of everybody's lawn parties, and only knew what an afternoon dance was like from Tiny's vivid description. She was not a girl of wide ambitions. Her highest aspiration at present was to please Aunt Dora, and she was as entirely happy trudging over the common with a well-filled basket on her arm as she would have been at the finest assembly in Daelshire. Aunt Dora and the three girls looked up as Morton entered, all surprised at his return. How early you are! exclaimed Tiny, throwing herself back against the marble pillar of the chimney-piece, and stretching out her pretty little feet for the easier contemplation of a pair of picturesque buckled shoes and black silk stockings. Did the spooning process seem a little flat this evening? We seldom see you till past eleven when you've been dining at Fairview. I have not dined at Fairview. Oh, then where have you been dining, child? asked Horatia with her practical manner. It must have been a very dull dinner, or you would hardly have come away so early. If you don't want to be ignominiously checkmate in three more moves, Lizzie, you'd better put a little more intention into your playing, added the younger Miss Blake severely. Lizzie Hardman detested chess and all other games of skill or chance, but had to play anything and everything when the Miss Blake's wanted an adversary. She was a capital person to play against, as she invariably lost the game. Just now her senses had fled from the board altogether, scared by that pale set look in Morton's face which indicated trouble of some kind. Aunt Dora was occupied with her knitting, and had only murmured a friendly welcome. Tiny was still gazing at her shoe buckles, and thinking how nice it was to be born with a high instep. Horatia was absorbed in a profound scheme for checkmating her weak antagonist in three moves. I haven't dined at all, said Morton, dropping into a chair near his aunt. I've had some business to look after. Not dined, cried Aunt Dora. Ring the bell, Tiny. Your brother must have some dinner. There was pheasant sent away, untouched, if you were to have that after a little soup, Morton. Dear auntie, don't worry yourself about pheasants and soups, said her nephew with the wearied air. I am rather tired, but I've no appetite for dinner. I'll take a crust and a glass of wine presently. Tiny withdrew her gaze from her shoes to contemplate humanity in the uninteresting form of a brother. They were very pretty eyes, blue and bright, and smiling like sunshiny weather. You've quarrelled with Dulcy, she exclaimed. Nothing less than that will explain your dilapidated condition. Dulcy and I are not given to quarrelling, answered her brother curtly. What, do you never fight desperately in order to make friends again? asked Tiny. I thought that was one of the symptoms of spooning. Clementine, your slang and flippancy are becoming more insufferable every hour, remarked Horatia, with her fingers hovering above a bishop. Will you give me five minutes in your own room, Aunt Dora? asked Morton in a low voice. Miss Blake laid down her knitting instantly, and rose to comply with his request. Morton, how white you're looking, she exclaimed. Something's happened. Yes, something has happened. Oh, nothing that concerns Dulcy. Aunt Dora was very fond of Morton's sweetheart. No, dearest Auntie, Dulcy is right enough. Horatia and Clementine now began to perceive that something was amiss. Tiny rose from her low seat. Horatia left the game, unfinished. Morton, you are unnecessarily mysterious and alarming, she said disapprovingly. Has anything dreadful happened? Is anybody ill? Is anybody dead? Has the Dale-Shabank broken? None of these things has happened. Aunt Dora will tell you all, by and by, answered Morton gravely. The event which has come to pass tonight is something which ought to make us all glad. But it revives the sorrow of years gone by. You know what anniversary this is. I wish I didn't, exclaimed Tiny. I've been trying industriously to forget it all day. I never try to forget, said Horatia. I consider it a duty to remember. It is a small thing for us to give our dead father some of our thoughts on this day. Aunt Dora's soft brown eyes were full of tears. She put her hand in Morton's and went with him out of the room, and across the wide tessellated hall to her pretty nest at the back of the house. The fire burned low on the tiled half. There was a moderator lamp on the table which Morton lighted before he sat down. The room was the brightest and prettiest in the house. Here, as in the drawing room, there were books and flowers and water-coloured pictures and old china. But here everything had a peculiar grace and interesting individuality. There were indications of a life at once artistic and industrious. A drawing board with an unfinished flower study on the table in the window. A large beehive work-basket in a corner by the half. One little table devoted to account books and commonplace details of housekeeping, another to Aunt Dora's favourite poets and philosophers, from Shorcer to Tennyson, from Erasmus to De Quincey. Of all the pictures in the room, there was one which caught the stranger's eye and arrested it. It was a portrait in water-colour which hung above the chimney-piece, the half-length figure of a man in the prime of life. A frank handsome face, bright blue eyes, crispy curling-orban hair, a broad forehead, a candid mouth, a face supremely attractive and lovable, suggestive of an existence that had never been shadowed by grief or care, a soul untainted by one base thought. This was the portrait of Walter Blake, painted two years before his death, at a time when he had recovered from the moderate amount of sorrow which he had felt for the loss of a somewhat uninteresting wife, never passionately loved. The picture had been painted as a birthday gift for the sister who worshipped him. It was the only likeness for which Walter Blake had ever consented to sit. Morton looked up at the picture as he took his seat beside the hearth. Never had the face seemed so lifelike. Tell me what has happened, Morton, said Dora Blake anxiously, but in no wise shaken from that abiding tranquillity which was her greatest charm. It is something that concerns my brother's death, is it not? Some discovery has been made? Yes, there has been a discovery, and an important one. My father's murderer has given himself up to justice. He will sleep to-night in high, clear jail. Dorothy's pale face blanched to a death-like whiteness. Great Heaven! she exclaimed. Who is the man? All her calmness was gone. Her lips trembled so much that she could hardly form the words she wanted to speak. A wretched creature, a half-starved tramp, more like a wolf than a man. Oh, thank God! exclaimed Dorothea. Thank God! echoed Morton. I do with all my heart thank God that retribution has come at last, that we shall have blood for blood. A poor compensation, for who could set such a creature's existence against my father's valuable life? We are all of the same value in the sight of our Heavenly Father, Morton, and Sir Dora in her grave sweet tones. In his sight we are all sinners. I am sorry for this unhappy creature whom remorse has driven to confess his crime. Sorry? sorry for the man who killed your brother? cried Morton indignantly. That may be Christianity, but it is a kind of Christianity I do not understand. I am sorry for his sin, and for the shameful death he will have to die. And I am glad, heartily glad, savagely glad, if you like, Aunt Dora. I loved my father too well to be capable of this high-flown humanity of yours. I shall go to see the man hanged if the authorities will let me, and I shall feel happier when I see the drop fall, and know that this one merciless villain has gone to his doom. Had he any mercy upon me when he killed my father? All our passions are merciless, Morton, answered his aunt, whose face and manner had recovered their customary repose. God, who sees and understands all our evil propensities, alone knows how short the distance is between innocence and crime. This unhappy wretch may have been goaded by miseries that neither you nor I can understand. We who have so many advantages, and yet are so prone to fall, ought to be merciful to the outcasts who have never known the light. Morton rose impatiently and began to pace the room, just as he had paced Dulce's room a few hours before. I cannot understand you, he said. You seem to have no memory. Do you forget how my father's blood-bespattered corpse was brought home to this house? I was only ten years old, yet the feeling of that night, with all its horror and agony, are as vividly in my mind as if it were yesterday. I begin to think that no one loved my father as well as I did. I loved him, answered Aunt Dorre quietly. You may believe that. I loved him as few brothers are loved. What would I not have done for him? What sacrifice would I have thought too great? My poor boy, you do not know what you're talking about. Oh, forgive me, dear auntie. I know you're all goodness. But I'm angry tonight with everyone who doesn't feel this as deeply as I do. I was angry with Dulce, with Sir Everard. With Sir Everard? exclaimed Aunt Dorre. Does he know? It was to him the wretch declared his crime. How did Sir Everard take the revelation? With provoking coolness, he seemed to think the man an impostor, accusing himself of a crime he had not committed. Such things have happened, said his aunt thoughtfully. Well, possibly. But this is no case of false accusation. The man was neither drunk nor mad. A brute, but a brute in the full possession of such senses as are given to brutes. Thank God he is in jail, hard and fast by this time. There will be a trial. His crime will be brought home to him, and he will swing for it. Surely you must be glad of that, Aunt Dorre. She shook her head with a mournful gesture, and looked at Morton with eyes full of tears. Will my dear brother rest any easier in his grave because of his murderous doom? Will it make the thoughts of that cruel death so awful, so sudden, a strong man cut down in his pride of manhood full of thoughts and desire that belong to this world, with no time allowed him for one prayer, one act of faith and love? Will that memory be any easier to bear, Morton, because the wretch who did the deed shall have paid the price of his crime? No, my dear boy. There is no satisfaction to me in the idea of human retribution. Vengeance is mine. I will repay, saith the Lord. I have never doubted that my brother's murderer would be punished for his crime. But do you not see in this event of tonight the finger of Providence? Here is a wretch so goaded by remorse that he is driven to seek death as a relief from the burden of his sin. Oh, there must be some remnant of good in the man, said Aunt Dorre amusingly. Even for him there may be pardon if his repentance is sincere. You would pray for him and with him, I suppose, said her nephew with a sneer. I would, Morton, she answered quietly, and then seeing his angry look, she went up to him and laid her hand gently on his shoulder, such a pretty slender hand, as delicate as a girl's. Dear boy, you and I see things with different eyes. You are young and I am old. Time alone can teach the lesson of forbearance and patience under great injuries. And now, dear Morton, go and eat your supper, and try to get a good night's rest. You look worn and weary already, and you will have much excitement and anxiety to go through before this terrible business is finished. Good night, dear boy. Tell your sisters I shall not come back to the drawing-room. Shall I tell them what has happened? Not to-night. I will tell them tomorrow. Let them rest in peace to-night. And so Dorre Blake dismissed her nephew, and then went back to the hearth above which the dead man's picture hung. What a frank, bright face it was, smiling down at her full of the joy and pride of life. O great heaven, to see it thus and to remember the ghastly face she had looked upon twenty years ago, the clotted hair, the lifeless form bemired with duckweed and clay, just as it had been dragged out of the ditch where the murderer had flung it. Dorre Blake covered her face with her hands, as if to shut out the dreadful image which memory recalled so vividly. She sank shuddering into her chair by the fireside, and gave full vent to the passionate grief she had repressed in Morton's presence. He had thought her cold and wanting in love for his dead father, his opinion would have been curiously different if he could have seen her now, the tears rolling down her pale cheeks, her slender form convulsed with sobs. She grew calm at last, and lay back in her chair exhausted, gazing dreamily at the low fire. Oh, thank God it is not as I thought, she said to herself, anything is better than that. Presently she rose and unlocked an espritroir in which she kept all the sacred documents of her life, her diary, valued letters, mementos of lost friends, all the story of the past, a history which she alone could decipher. She opened a drawer and took out a packet of letters tied with a yellow ribbon, and from beneath the letters a crimson Morocco miniature case. She came back to her chair by the fire, and sat some minutes in a reverie with the case and the packet lying in her lap, then with a sigh she drew the lamp nearer to her, and opened the miniature case. A Parisian photographer had given all the vividness of life to one of the fairest faces that ever challenged his skill. It was a perfect face, lovely alike in feature and expression, smiling, yet with a look of latent sadness, gentle, pleading, the face of a woman born to love and to be beloved, rather than to dazzle or command, assuredly not the face of a coquette, yet hardly the highest type of womanhood. There was a faint suggestion of weakness in the sensitive lips, the small dimple chin. It was a countenance of childlike innocence and purity, but with no promise of the grand of virtues, heroism, fortitude, self-denial. Dora Blake sat gazing long at the lovely image, lost in a dream of the past. How well I could have loved her poor child, she sighed. How happy we all might have been, if fate had so willed. Then, rousing herself from sad regretful thoughts, she untied the yellow ribbon and looked slowly through the packet of letters. They were in a woman's hand, a small and delicate writing, with many a sentence underlined as if to give intensity to words which in themselves were passionate. Miss Blake only looked at a page here and there, a line, a phrase, sighing as she read. What vehement eager life there had been in the writer of those words, how heart and mind had gone with the hand. And yet within a year the hand had been dust, the passionate heart had been still forever. Oh, it's too sad a story, said Miss Blake as she rearranged the packet and tied the yellow ribbon round those faded letters. The history of a broken heart. She replaced the packet and the photograph in her drawer and locked the escritoir. Presently there came a gentle tap at the door. Come in, said Miss Blake, a little vexed at being disturbed. The door was opened quietly and Lizzie Hardman peeped in. May I come in for a few minutes, auntie, just to say a word or two? Oh, is it you, child? Oh, yes, you may come. I don't mind you. Lizzie crept softly to Aunt Dora's side and put her arm round her neck and kissed her without a word. Everybody was fond of Aunt Dora, but her nieces used to protest that Lizzie's affectation was absurd in its demonstrative devotion. Yet Lizzie Hardman was by no means demonstrative in any other relation of life. Her love for her benefactress seemed the one only warm feeling in her nature. Well, she's extremely obliging and will fetch and carry for us like a dog and put up with our tempers in the sweetest way, said Horatia. But in spite of her sweetness, I don't believe she cares a straw for Clementine or me. Her idolatry of auntie is absolutely preposterous. I don't see that, Hori, and so tiny. Aunt Dora is such a delicious creature. Nobody can help loving her. Oh, yet Aunt Dora might wear damp boots for a whole evening, before you would run to fetch her slippers, retorted her ratio with some justice, for Tiny's weak point was selfishness. Well, Lizzie, what do you want? asked Miss Blake, after she had submitted to the girl's kiss. I know something has happened. I was afraid you might be unhappy. Morton looks so pale, so terribly excited. Oh, Auntie, is it anything very dreadful? Anything that will lead to unhappiness? He said we ought all to be glad, but his own manner was so strange. How anxious you are about Morton. And about you, said Lizzie. You've been crying. I can see that. Let me go to your room with you, auntie dear, and read you to sleep. I know you'll be giving way to sad memories if I don't. Well, you shall come with me if you like, Lizzie. A few pages of Tennyson or Browning will be more soothing than my thoughts. Don't ask me any questions. You'll hear everything tomorrow. I can wait, answered Lizzie. Have the girls gone to bed? Yes, half an hour ago. Morton had a little supper in the dining room. Very little. It was a mere pretence of eating. And then he went up to his room. He looks dreadfully ill. He has had a shock. Oh, poor fellow. But it's nothing about Miss Courtney. Oh, no, no. She is unconcerned in the business. Oh, that's a blessing, said Lizzie, as they went slowly up the broad staircase to the lofty, modern-looking corridor from which the bedrooms opened. End of chapter seven.