A Secret Inheritance. Volume 3 of 3. Farjeon Benjamin Leopold

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СКАЧАТЬ wrote on a leaf torn from my pocketbook, 'Do not be alarmed at my absence; I shall be back at sunrise. There is something I have forgotten, which must be done immediately. Sleep in peace. All is well. – Your lover and husband, EMILIUS.' I pinned this paper at her breast, arranged the rugs securely about her, and left her.

      "I cannot describe to you how I was directed, but I plunged without hesitation and in perfect confidence into the labyrinths of the forest, and my steps were directed aright. I walked swiftly, and recognised certain natural aspects made familiar to me in my dreams. And in little more than an hour I saw Eric a few yards ahead of me, strolling aimlessly and in a disturbed mood. I called to him.

      "'Eric!'

      "'Emilius!'

      "But there was no friendliness in his tone.

      "'It is you who have been dogging me!' he cried.

      "'I have but this moment arrived,' I replied.

      "'In search of me?'

      "'Yes, my dear brother,' I said, passing my arm around him. 'We must speak together, in love and confidence, as we have ever done.'

      "Already he was softened, and I breathed a grateful sigh.

      "'Have you been followed, Eric?' I asked.

      "'I do not know,' he replied. 'I cannot say. I have been racked and tormented by torturing fancies. Trees have taken ominous shapes; shadows have haunted me; my mind is distraught; my heart is bleeding!'

      "It would occupy me for too long a time to narrate circumstantially all that passed between me and Eric on that our last interview. Suffice it that I succeeded to some extent in calming him, that I succeeded in making him understand that I had done him no conscious wrong; that Patricia was my wife and loved me.

      "'Had it been your lot, Eric,' I said, 'to have won her love, I should have suffered as you are suffering; but believe me, my dear brother, that I should have endeavoured to bear my sufferings like a man. It lay not with us that this should have occurred; it lay with Patricia. It is not so much our happiness, but hers, that is at stake.'

      "It is a consolation to me in my present peril to know that I succeeded in wooing him back to our old relations, in which we were guided wholly and solely by brotherly love. You are not to believe that this was accomplished without difficulty. There were, on his side, paroxysms of rebellion and despair, in one of which-after he had learned that I and Patricia were man and wife-he cried, 'Well, kill me, for I do not care to live!' These were the words heard by the witness who has testified against me. They bear, I well know, an injurious construction, but my conscience is not disturbed. My heart is-and I am racked by a torture which threatens to undermine my reason when I think of my wife and unborn child.

      "At length peace was established between me and my dear brother. And then it was that I told him of my dream, and of the uncontrollable impulse which had urged me to seek for him in the forest. I asked him to accompany me back to Patricia, but he said that was impossible, and that he could not endure the agony of it. I put myself in his place, and recognised that his refusal was natural. But I could not entirely dismiss my fears for his safety. Eric, however, refused to share them. 'What is to be will be,' he said; 'otherwise it would not have been fated that our father and his brother-twins, as we are-should have loved the same woman, and that we should have done the same.'

      "I was anxious to get back to Patricia, and I left him in the forest. I knew nothing further until I was arrested and thrown into prison."

      "An innocent man?" said Doctor Louis.

      "As innocent as yourself," was Emilius's reply.

      IX

      Throughout this narration Doctor Louis was impressed by the suspicion that something was hidden from him. He pressed Emilius upon the point, and his suspicion was strengthened by the evasive replies he received.

      "Enough, for the present, of myself," said Emilius; "let me hear something of the outside world-of the world that is dead to me."

      "What do you wish to know?" asked Doctor Louis sadly.

      "Of yourselves," replied Emilius. "Of your good wife, whom I used to look upon as a second mother. She is well?"

      "She is well," said Doctor Louis, "but in deep unhappiness because of these terrible events."

      "How does she regard me-as innocent or guilty?"

      "She has the firmest belief in your innocence. When I told her I was about to visit you, she desired me to give you her love and sympathy."

      "It is like her. And Lauretta?"

      "I did not inform her that I was coming. She is in great distress. You and Eric were as brothers to her."

      "And now," said Emilius, with a certain recklessness of manner which puzzled Doctor Louis, "one is dead and the other disgraced. But she will live through it. She has a happy future before her?"

      He put this somewhat in the form of a question, to which Doctor Louis replied without hesitation: "We have the best of reasons for hoping so. But our conversation, Emilius, appears to have taken a heartless turn. Let us rather consider the chances of establishing your innocence and setting you free."

      "No, let us continue to speak of your family. There may not be another opportunity-who knows? My judges may take it into their heads to keep me in solitary confinement, and to deprive me entirely of the solace of friendly intercourse, until they have got rid of me altogether. The chances of establishing my innocence are scarcely worth considering; they are so slender. Slender! They are not even that. I see no loophole, nor do you. What is wanted is fact-hard, solid fact, such as an actual witness, or a frank confession from the murderer. Everything tangible and intangible is against me. Eric and I were rivals in a woman's love; we had a meeting, in which we reconciled our differences, and in which the horror of brotherly hatred was scotched clean dead. Who were present at this meeting? My dear brother, who is gone and cannot testify; and I, whose interest it is to say whatever my tongue can utter in my defence. To prove my innocence I can bring forward-what? Shadows. I could forgive my judges for laughing at me were I to set up such a defence. Easier to believe that I killed my brother in a dream. Could that be proved, there would be some hope for me, for it might be argued that I was not accountable. Let us dismiss it. I have told you all I know positively; for the rest, I am strong enough to keep it to myself, being aware of the manner in which it would be received."

      "Surely you are not wearied of life!" said Doctor Louis, shocked at this reckless mood.

      "That is not to the point. Wearied or not, it is not in my power to choose. Were I free, were my fate in my own hands, it would be worth my while to consider how to act in order that the crime might be fixed upon the guilty one. And hearken, Doctor, I am not swayed by impulse; there is something of inward direction which holds me up. I hear voices, I see visions-not to be heard or seen or taken into account in a court of justice; of value only in a prison. They assure me that, though I may suffer and be disgraced, I shall not die until my innocence is proved."

      "Heaven grant it!" exclaimed Doctor Louis.

      "Meanwhile, I wait and take the strokes which fate deals out to me. A crushed manhood, a ruined life, a blasted happiness! And there is a happy future, you say, before Lauretta? You have every confidence in Mr. Carew? Lauretta loves him?"

      "With her whole heart."

      "And you and your good wife approve-are content to СКАЧАТЬ