A Secret Inheritance. Volume 2 of 3

"I have no hopes and no fears," he said. "I have done wrong, but not the wrong with which I am charged."

"Look at me, Pierre."

His response to this was to hide his head closer on his breast, to make an even stronger endeavour to avoid my glance.

"When I next command you," I said, "you will obey. About your soul? Believing that you possess one, what worse peril can threaten it than the pass to which you have brought it by your crime."

And still he doggedly repeated, "I have committed no crime."

"You fear me?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because you are here to tempt me, to ensnare me. I will not look at you."

I strode to his side, and with my strong hand on his shoulder, forced him to raise his head, forced him to look me straight in the face. His eyes wavered for a few moments, shifted as though they would escape my compelling power, and finally became fixed on mine. He had no power to resist me. The will in me was strong, and produced its effects on the weaker mind. Gradually what brilliancy there was in his eyes became dimmed, and drew but a reflected, shadowy light from mine. Thus we remained face to face for four or five minutes, and then I spoke.

"Relate to me," I said, "all that you know from the time you and the man who is dead conceived the idea of coming to Nerac up to the present moment. Conceal nothing. The truth, the bare, naked truth!"

"We were poor, both of us," Pierre commenced, "and had been poor all our lives. That would not have mattered had we been able to obtain meat and wine. But we could not. We were neither of us honest, and had been in prison more than once for theft. We were never innocent when we were convicted, although we swore we were. I got tired of it; starvation is a poor game. I would have been contented with a little, and so would he, but we could not make sure of that little. Nothing else was left to us but to take what we wanted. The wild beasts do; why should not we? But we were too well known in our village, some sixty miles from Nerac, so, talking it over, we said we would come here and try our luck. We had heard of Doctor Louis, and that he was a rich man. He can spare what we want, we said; we will go and take. We had no idea of blood; we only wanted money, to buy meat and wine with. So we started, with nothing in our pockets. On the first day we had a slice of luck. We met a man and waylaid him, and took from him all the money he had in his pockets. It was not much, but enough to carry us to Nerac. No more; but we were satisfied. We did not hurt the man; a knock on the head did not take his senses from him, but brought him to them; so, being convinced, he gave us what he had, and we departed on our way. We were not fast walkers, and, besides, we did not know the straightest road to Nerac, so we were four days on the journey. When we entered the inn of the Three Black Crows we had just enough money left to pay for a bottle of red wine. We called for it, and sat drinking. While we were there a spirit entered in the shape of a man. This spirit, whom I did not then know to be a demon, sat talking with the landlord of the Three Black Crows. He looked towards the place where we were sitting, and I wondered whether he and the landlord were talking of us; I could not tell, because what they said did not reach my ears. He went away, and we went away, too, some time afterwards. We wanted another bottle of red wine, but the landlord would not give it to us without our paying for it, and we had no money; our pockets were bare. So out we went into the night. It was very dark. We had settled our plan. Before we entered the Three Black Crows we had found out Doctor Louis's house, and knew exactly how it was situated; there would be no difficulty in finding it later on, despite the darkness. We had decided not to make the attempt until at least two hours past midnight, but, for all that, when we left the inn we walked in the direction of the doctor's house. I do not know if we should have continued our way, because, although I saw nothing and heard nothing, I had a fancy that we were being followed; I couldn't say by what, but the idea was in my mind. So, talking quietly together, he and I determined to turn back to some woods on the outskirts of Nerac which we had passed through before we reached the village, and there to sleep an hour or two till the time arrived to put our plan into execution. Back we turned, and as we went there came a sign to me. I don't know how; it was through the senses, for I don't remember hearing anything that I could not put down to the wind. My mate heard it too, and we stopped in fear. 'What was that?' my mate said. 'Are we being followed?' I said nothing. We stood quiet a long while, and heard nothing. Then my mate said, 'It was the wind;' and we went on till we came to the woods, which we entered. Down upon the ground we threw ourselves, and in a minute my mate was asleep. Not so I; but I pretended to be. Then came a Shadow that bent over us. I did not move; I even breathed regularly to put it off the scent. Presently it departed, and I opened my eyes; nothing was near us. Then, being tired with the long day's walk, and knowing that there was work before us which would be better done after a little rest, I fell asleep myself. We both slept, I can't say how long, but from the appearance of the night I judged till about the time we had resolved to do our work. I woke first, and awoke my mate, and off we set to the doctor's house. We reached it in less than an hour, and nothing disturbed us on the way. That made me think that I had been deceived, and that my senses had been playing tricks with me. I told my mate of my fears, and he laughed at me, and I laughed, too, glad to be relieved. We walked round the doctor's house, to decide where we should commence. The front of it faces the road, and we thought that too dangerous, so we made our way to the back, and, talking in whispers, settled to bore a hole through the shutters there. We were very quiet; no fear of our being heard. The hole being bored, it was easy to cut away wood enough to enable us to open the window and make our way into the house. We did not intend violence, that is, not more than was necessary for our safety. We had talked it over, and had decided that no blood was to be shed. Robbers we were, but not murderers. Our plan was to gag and tie up any one who interfered with us. My mate and I had had no quarrel; we were faithful partners; and I had no other thought than to remain true to him as he had no other thought than to remain true to me. Share and share alike-that was what we both intended. So he worked away at the shutter, while I looked on. Suddenly, crack! A blow came, from the air it seemed, and down fell my mate, struck dead! He did not move; he did not speak; he died, unshriven. I looked down, dazed, when I heard a swishing sound in the air behind me, as though a great club was making a circle and about to fall upon my head. It was all in a minute, and I turned and saw the demon. Dark as it was, I saw him. I slanted my body aside, and the club, instead of falling upon my head, fell upon my shoulder. I ran for my life, and down came another blow, on my head this time, but it did not kill me. I raced like a madman, tearing at the bushes, and the demon after me. I was struck again and again, but not killed. Wounded and bleeding, I continued my flight, till flat I fell like a log. Not because all my strength was gone; no, there was still a little left; but I showed myself more cunning than the demon, for down I went as if I was dead, and he left me, thinking me so. Then, when he was gone, I opened my eyes, and managed to drag myself away to the place where I was found yesterday more dead than alive. I did not kill my mate; I never raised my hand against him. What I have said is the truth, as I hope for mercy in the next world, if I don't get it in this!"

This was the incredible story related to me by the villain who had threatened the life of the woman I loved; for he did not deceive me; murder was in his heart, and his low cunning only served to show him in a blacker light. However, I did not leave him immediately. I released him from the spell I had cast upon him, and he stood before me, shaking and trembling, with a look in his eyes as though he had just been awakened from sleep.

"What have I said?" he muttered.

"You have confessed all," I said, meeting cunning with cunning.

"All!" he muttered. "What do you mean?"

Then I told him that he had made a full confession of his crime, and in the telling expounded my own theory, as if it had come from his lips, of the thoughts which led to it, and of its final committal-my hope being that he would even now admit that he was the murderer. But he vehemently defended himself.

"If I have said as much," he said, "it is you who have driven me to it, and it is you who have come here to set a snare for my destruction. But it is not possible, because what you have told me is false from beginning to end."

So I left him, amazed at his dogged, determined obstinacy, which I knew would not avail him. He was doomed, and justly doomed.

CHAPTER XXIII

I have been reading over the record I have written of my life, which has been made with care and a strict adherence to the truth. I am at the present hour sitting alone in the house I have taken and furnished, and to which I hope shortly to bring my beloved Lauretta as my wife. The writing of this record from time to time has grown into a kind of habit with me, and there are occasions in which I have been greatly interested in it myself. Never until this night have I read the record from beginning to end, and I have come to a resolution to discontinue it. My reason is a sufficient one, and as it concerns no man else, no man can dispute my right to make it.

My resolution is, after to-morrow, to allow my new life, soon to commence, to flow on uninterruptedly without burdening myself with the labour of putting into writing the happy experiences awaiting me. I shall be no longer alone; Lauretta will be by my side; I should begrudge the hours which deprived me of her society.

Another thing. I must have no secrets from her; and much that here is recorded should properly be read by no eye than mine. Lauretta's nature is so gentle, her soul so pure, that it would distress her to read these pages. This shall not be. I recognise a certain morbid vein in myself which the continuing of this record might magnify into a disease. It presents itself to me in the light of guarding myself against myself, by adopting wise measures to foster cheerfulness. That my nature is more melancholy than cheerful is doubtless to be ascribed to the circumstances of my child-life, which was entirely devoid of light and gaiety. This must not be in the future; I have a battle to fight, and I shall conquer because Lauretta's happiness is on the issue.

It will, however, be as well to make the record complete in a certain sense, and I shall therefore take note of certain things which have occurred since my conversation with Pierre in his cell. That done, I shall put these papers aside in a secret place, and shall endeavour to forget them. My first thought was to destroy the record, but I was influenced in the contrary direction by the fact that my first meeting with Lauretta and the growth of my love for her are described in it. First impressions jotted down at the time of their occurrence have a freshness about them which can never be imparted by the aid of memory, and it may afford me pleasure in the future to live over again, through these pages, the sweet days of my early intimacy with my beloved girl. Then there is the strange story of Kristel and Silvain, which undoubtedly is worth preserving.

First, to get rid of the miserable affair of the attempt to rob Doctor Louis's house. Pierre was tried and convicted, and has paid the penalty of his crime. His belief in the possession of a soul could not, after all, have had in it the spirit of sincerity; it must have been vaunted merely in pursuance of his cunning endeavours to escape his just punishment; otherwise he would have confessed before he died. Father Daniel, the good priest, did all he could to bring the man to repentance, but to the last he insisted that he was innocent. It was strange to me to hear Father Daniel express himself sympathetically towards the criminal.

"He laboured, up to the supreme moment," said the good priest, in a compassionate tone, "under the singular hallucination that he was going before his Maker guiltless of the shedding of blood. So fervent and apparently sincere were his protestations that I could not help being shaken in my belief that he was guilty."

"Then you believe in demons?" I remarked, amazed at this weakness.

"Not in the sense," said Father Daniel, "that the unhappy man would have had me believe. Reason rejects his story as something altogether too incredulous; and yet I pity him."

I did not prolong the discussion with the good priest; it would have been useless, and, to Father Daniel, painful. We looked at the matter from widely different standpoints. Intolerance warps the judgment; no less does such a life as Father Daniel has lived, for ever seeking to find excuses for error and crime, for ever seeking to palliate a man's misdeeds. Sweetness of disposition, carried to extremes, may degenerate into positive mental feebleness; to my mind this is the case with Father Daniel. He is not the kind who, in serious matters, can be depended upon for a just estimate of human affairs.

Eric and Emilius, after a longer delay than Doctor Louis anticipated, have taken up their residence in Nerac. They paid two short visits to the village, and I was in hopes each time upon their departure that they had relinquished their intention of living in Nerac. I did not give expression to my wish, for I knew it was not shared by any member of Doctor Louis's family.

It is useless to disguise that I dislike them, and that there exists between us a certain antipathy. To be just, this appears to be more on my side than on theirs, and it is not in my disfavour that the feelings I entertain are nearer the surface. Doctor Louis and the ladies entertain a high opinion of them; I do not; and I have already some reason for looking upon them with a suspicious eye. This reason I will presently explain.

When we were first introduced it was natural that I should regard them with interest, an interest which sprang from the story of their father's fateful life. They bear a wonderful resemblance to each other they are both fair, with tawny beards, which it appears to me they take a pride in shaping and trimming alike; their eyes are blue, and they are of exactly the same height. Undoubtedly handsome men, having in that respect the advantage of me, who, in point of attractive looks, cannot compare with them. They seem to be devotedly attached to each other, but this may or may not be. So were Silvain and Kristel until a woman stepped between them and changed their love to hate. Before I came into personal relationship with Eric and Emilius I made up my mind to distrust appearances and to seek for evidence upon which to form an independent judgment. Some such evidence has already come to me, and I shall secretly follow it up.

They are on terms of the most affectionate intimacy with Doctor Louis and his family, and both Lauretta and Lauretta's mother take pleasure in their society; Doctor Louis, also, in a lesser degree. Women are always more effusive than men.

They are not aware of the relations which bind me to the village. That they may have some suspicion of my feelings for Lauretta is more than probable, for I have seen them look from her to me and then at each other, and I have interpreted these looks. It is as if they said, "Why is this stranger here? He is usurping our place." I have begged Doctor Louis to allow me to speak openly to Lauretta, and he has consented to shorten the period of silence to which I was pledged. I have his permission to declare my love to his daughter to-morrow. There are no doubts in my mind that she will accept me; but there are doubts that if I left it too late there would be danger that her love for me would be weakened. Yes, although it is torture to me to admit it I cannot rid myself of this impression. How would this be effected and by whom? By these brothers, Eric and Emilius, and by means of misrepresentations to my injury. I have no positive data to go upon, but I am convinced that they have an aversion towards me, and that they are in their hearts jealous of me. The doctor is blind to their true character; he believes them to be generous and noble-minded, men of rectitude and high principle. They are not so. I have the evidence of my senses in proof of it.

So much have I been disturbed and unhinged by my feelings towards these brothers-feelings which I have but imperfectly expressed-that latterly I have frequently been unable to sleep. Impossible to lie abed and toss about for hours in an agony of unrest; therefore I chose the lesser evil, and resumed the nocturnal wanderings which was my habit in Rosemullion before the death of my parents. These nightly rambles have been taken in secret, as in the days of my boyhood, and I mused and spoke aloud as was my custom during that period of my life. But I had new objects to occupy me now-the home in which I hoped to enjoy a heaven of happiness, with Lauretta its guiding star, and all the bright anticipations of the future. I strove to confine myself to these dreams, which filled my soul with joy, but there came to me always the figures of Eric and Emilius, dark shadows to threaten my promised happiness.

Last week it was, on a night in which I felt that sleep would not be mine if I sought my couch; therefore, earlier than usual-it was barely eleven o'clock-I left the house, and went into the woods. Martin Hartog and his fair daughter were in the habit of retiring early and rising with the sun, and I stole quietly away unobserved. At twelve o'clock I turned homewards, and when I was about a hundred yards from my house I was surprised to hear a low murmur of voices within a short distance of me. Since the night on which I visited the Three Black Crows and saw the two strangers there who had come to Nerac with evil intent, I had become very watchful, and now these voices speaking at such an untimely hour thoroughly aroused me. I stepped quietly in their direction, so quietly that I knew I could not be heard, and presently I saw standing at a distance of ten or twelve yards the figures of a man and a woman. The man was Emilius, the woman Martin Hartog's daughter.

Although I had heard their voices before I reached the spot upon which I stood when I recognised their forms, I could not even now determine what they said, they spoke in such low tones. So I stood still and watched them and kept myself from their sight. I may say honestly that I should not have been guilty of the meanness had it not been that I entertain an unconquerable aversion against Eric and Emilius. I was sorry to see Martin Hartog's daughter holding a secret interview with a man at midnight, for the girl had inspired me with a respect of which I now knew she was unworthy; but I cannot aver that I was sorry to see Emilius in such a position, for it was an index to his character and a justification of the unfavourable opinion I had formed of him and Eric. Alike as they were in physical presentment, I had no doubt that their moral natures bore the same kind of resemblance. Libertines both of them, ready for any low intrigue, and holding in light regard a woman's good name and fame. Truly the picture before me showed clearly the stuff of which these brothers are made. If they hold one woman's good name so lightly, they hold all women so. Fit associates, indeed, for a family so pure and stainless as Doctor Louis's!

This was no chance meeting-how was that possible at such an hour? It was premeditated. Theirs was no new acquaintanceship; it must have lasted already some time. The very secrecy of the interview was in itself a condemnation.

Should I make Doctor Louis acquainted with the true character of the brothers who held so high a place in his esteem? This was the question that occurred to me as I gazed upon Emilius and Martin Hartog's daughter, and I soon answered it in the negative. Doctor Louis was a man of settled convictions, hard to convince, hard to turn. His first impulse, upon which he would act, would be to go straight to Emilius, and enlighten him upon the discovery I had made. And then? Why, then, Emilius would invent some tale which it would not be hard to believe, and make light of a matter I deemed so serious. I should be placed in the position of an eavesdropper, as a man setting sly watches upon others to whom, from causeless grounds, I had taken a dislike. I should be at a disadvantage. Whatever the result one thing was certain-that I was a person capable not only of unreasonable antipathies but of small meannesses to which a gentleman would not descend. The love which Doctor Louis bore to Silvain, and which he had transferred to Silvain's children, was not to be easily turned; and at the best I should be introducing doubts into his mind which would reflect upon myself because of the part of spy I had played. No; I decided for the present at least, to keep the knowledge to myself.

As to Martin Hartog, though I could not help feeling pity for him, it was for him, not me, to look after his daughter. From a general point of view these affairs were common enough.

I seemed to see now in a clearer light the kind of man Silvain was-one who would set himself deliberately to deceive where most he was trusted. Honour, fair dealing, brotherly love, were as nought in his eyes where a woman was concerned, and he had transmitted these qualities to Eric and Emilius. My sympathy for Kristel was deepened by what I was gazing on; more than ever was I convinced of the justice of the revenge he took upon the brother who had betrayed him.

These were the thoughts which passed through my mind while Emilius and Martin Hartog's daughter stood conversing. Presently they strolled towards me, and I shrank back in fear of being discovered. This involuntary action on my part, being an accentuation of the meanness of which I was guilty, confirmed me in the resolution at which I had arrived to say nothing of my discovery to Doctor Louis.

They passed me in silence, walking in the direction of my house. I did not follow them, and did not return home for another hour.

CHAPTER XXIV

How shall I describe the occurrences of this day, the most memorable and eventful in my life? A new life is opening for me. I am overwhelmed at the happiness which is within my grasp. As I walked home from Doctor Louis's house through the darkness a spirit walked by my side, illumining the gloom and filling my heart with gladness.

At one o'clock I presented myself at Doctor Louis's house. He met me at the door, expecting me, and asked me to come with him to a little room he uses as a study. I followed him in silence. His face was grave, and but for its kindly expression I should have feared it was his intention to revoke the permission he had given me to speak to his daughter on this day of the deep, the inextinguishable love I bear for her. He motioned me to a chair, and I seated myself and waited for him to speak.

"This hour," he said, "is to me most solemn."

"And to me, sir," I responded.

"It should be," he said, "to you perhaps, more than to me; but we are inclined ever to take the selfish view. I have been awake very nearly the whole of the night, and so has my wife. Our conversation-well, you can guess the object of it."

"Lauretta, sir."

"Yes, Lauretta, our only child, whom you are about to take from us." I trembled with joy, his words betokening a certainty that Lauretta loved me, an assurance I had yet to receive from her own sweet lips. "My wife and I," he continued, "have been living over again the life of our dear one, and the perfect happiness we have drawn from her. I am not ashamed to say that we have committed some weaknesses during these last few hours, weaknesses springing from our affection for our Home Rose. In the future some such experience may be yours, and then you will know-which now is hidden from you-what parents feel who are asked to give their one ewe lamb into the care of a stranger." I started. "There is no reason for alarm, Gabriel," he said, "because I have used a true word. Until a few short months ago you were really a stranger to us."