The Greatest Murder Mysteries of Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Mary Elizabeth Braddon

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      Chapter 7

       After a Year.

       Table of Contents

      The first year of George Talboys’ widowhood passed away, the deep band of crepe about his hat grew brown and dusty, and as the last burning day of another August faded out, he sat smoking cigars in the quiet chambers of Figtree Court, much as he had done the year before, when the horror of his grief was new to him, and every object in life, however trifling or however important, seemed saturated with his one great sorrow.

      But the big ex-dragoon had survived his affliction by a twelvemonth, and hard as it may be to have to tell it, he did not look much the worse for it. Heaven knows what wasted agonies of remorse and self-reproach may not have racked George’s honest heart, as he lay awake at nights thinking of the wife he had abandoned in the pursuit of a fortune, which she never lived to share.

      Once, while they were abroad, Robert Audley ventured to congratulate him upon his recovered spirits. He burst into a bitter laugh.

      “Do you know, Bob,” he said, “that when some of our fellows were wounded in India, they came home, bringing bullets inside them. They did not talk of them, and they were stout and hearty, and looked as well, perhaps, as you or I; but every change in the weather, however slight, every variation of the atmosphere, however trifling, brought back the old agony of their wounds as sharp as ever they had felt it on the battle-field. I’ve had my wound, Bob; I carry the bullet still, and I shall carry it into my coffin.”

      The travelers returned from St. Petersburg in the spring, and George again took up his quarters at his old friend’s chambers, only leaving them now and then to run down to Southampton and take a look at his little boy. He always went loaded with toys and sweetmeats to give to the child; but, for all this, Georgey would not become very familiar with his papa, and the young man’s heart sickened as he began to fancy that even his child was lost to him.

      “What can I do?” he thought. “If I take him away from his grandfather, I shall break his heart; if I let him remain, he will grow up a stranger to me, and care more for that drunken old hypocrite than for his own father. But then, what could an ignorant, heavy dragoon like me do with such a child? What could I teach him, except to smoke cigars and idle around all day with his hands in his pockets?”

      So the anniversary of that 30th of August, upon which George had seen the advertisement of his wife’s death in the Times newspaper, came round for the first time, and the young man put off his black clothes and the shabby crape from his hat, and laid his mournful garments in a trunk in which he kept a packet of his wife’s letters, her portrait, and that lock of hair which had been cut from her head after death. Robert Audley had never seen either the letters, the portrait, or the long tress of silky hair; nor, indeed, had George ever mentioned the name of his dead wife after that one day at Ventnor, on which he learned the full particulars of her decease.

      “I shall write to my cousin Alicia to-day, George,” the young barrister said, upon this very 30th of August. “Do you know that the day after to-morrow is the 1st of September? I shall write and tell her that we will both run down to the Court for a week’s shooting.”

      “No, no, Bob; go by yourself; they don’t want me, and I’d rather —”

      “Bury yourself in Figtree Court, with no company but my dogs and canaries! No, George, you shall do nothing of the kind.”

      “But I don’t care for shooting.”

      “And do you suppose I care for it?” cried Robert, with charming naivete. “Why, man, I don’t know a partridge from a pigeon, and it might be the 1st of April, instead of the 1st of September, for aught I care. I never hurt a bird in my life, but I have hurt my own shoulder with the weight of my gun. I only go down to Essex for the change of air, the good dinners, and the sight of my uncle’s honest, handsome face. Besides, this time I’ve another inducement, as I want to see this fair-haired paragon — my new aunt. You’ll go with me, George?”

      “Yes, if you really wish it.”

      The quiet form his grief had taken after its first brief violence, left him as submissive as a child to the will of his friend; ready to go anywhere or do anything; never enjoying himself, or originating any enjoyment, but СКАЧАТЬ