The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney. Samuel Warren

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СКАЧАТЬ girl, still pursuing her sad and sacred task. We hesitated to disturb, by the slightest movement the repose of a death-bed over which belief and hope, those only potent ministers, shed light and calm! At length Dr. Curteis advanced gently towards the bed, and taking the daughter's hand, said in a low voice, "Had you not better retire, my dear young lady, for a few moments?" She understood him, and rising from her knees, threw herself in an ecstacy of grief upon the corpse, from which the spirit had just passed away. Assistance was summoned, and the sobbing girl was borne from the chamber.

      I descended, full of emotion, to the library, where Dr. Curteis promised shortly to join me. Noiselessly entering the room, I came suddenly upon the housekeeper and a tall young man, standing with their backs towards me in the recesses of one of the windows, and partly shrouded by the heavy cloth curtains. They were evidently in earnest conference, and several words, the significance of which did not at the moment strike me, reached my ears before they perceived my approach. The instant they did so, they turned hastily round, and eyed me with an expression of flurried alarm, which at the time surprised me not a little. "All is over, Mrs. Bourdon," said I, finding she did not speak; "and your presence is probably needed by Miss Armitage." A flash of intelligence, as I spoke, passed between the pair; but whether indicative of grief or joy, so momentary was the glance, I should have been puzzled to determine. The housekeeper immediately left the room, keeping her eyes, as she passed, fixed upon me with the same nervous apprehensive look which had before irritated Dr. Curteis. The young man followed more slowly. He was a tall and rather handsome youth, apparently about one or two-and-twenty years of age. His hair was black as jet, and his dark eyes were of singular brilliancy; but the expression, I thought, was scarcely a refined or highly-intellectual one. His resemblance to Mrs. Bourdon, whose son indeed he was, was very striking. He bowed slightly, but courteously, as to an equal, as he closed the door, and I was left to the undisturbed enjoyment of my own reflections, which, ill-defined and indistinct as they were, were anything but pleasant company. My reverie was at length interrupted by the entrance of the doctor, with the announcement that the carriage was in waiting to re-convey us to town.

      We had journeyed several miles on our return before a word was spoken by either of us. My companion was apparently even more painfully pre-occupied than myself. He was, however, the first to break silence. "The emaciated corpse we have just left little resembles the gay, beautiful girl, for whose smiles you and I were once disposed to shoot each other!" The doctor's voice trembled with emotion, and his face, I perceived, was pale as marble.

      "Mary Rawdon," I remarked, "lives again in her daughter."

      "Yes; her very image. Do you know," continued he, speaking with rapid energy, "I suspect Mary Rawdon—Mrs. Armitage, I would say—has been foully, treacherously dealt with!"

      I started with amazement; and yet the announcement but embodied and gave form and color to my own ill-defined and shadowy suspicions.

      "Good heavens! How? By whom?"

      "Unless I am greatly mistaken, she has been poisoned by an adept in the use of such destructive agents."

      "Mrs. Bourdon?"

      "No; by her son. At least my suspicions point that way. She is probably cognizant of the crime. But in order that you should understand the grounds upon which my conjectures are principally founded, I must enter into a short explanation. Mrs. Bourdon, a woman of Spanish extraction, and who formerly occupied a much higher position than she does now, has lived with Mrs. Armitage from the period of her husband's death, now about sixteen years ago. Mrs. Bourdon has a son, a tall, good-looking fellow enough, whom you may have seen."

      "He was with his mother in the library as I entered it after leaving you."

      "Ah! well, hem! This boy, in his mother's opinion—but that perhaps is somewhat excusable—exhibited early indications of having been born a "genius." Mrs. Armitage, who had been first struck by the beauty of the child, gradually acquired the same notion; and the result was, that he was little by little invested—with at least her tacit approval—with the privileges supposed to be the lawful inheritance of such gifted spirits; namely, the right to be as idle as he pleased—geniuses, you know, can, according to the popular notion, attain any conceivable amount of knowledge per saltum at a bound—and to exalt himself in the stilts of his own conceit above the useful and honorable pursuits suited to the station in life in which Providence had cast his lot. The fruit of such training soon showed itself. Young Bourdon grew up a conceited and essentially-ignorant puppy, capable of nothing but bad verses, and thoroughly impressed with but one important fact, which was, that he, Alfred Bourdon, was the most gifted and the most ill-used of all God's creatures. To genius, in any intelligible sense of the term, he has in truth no pretension. He is endowed, however, with a kind of reflective talent, which is often mistaken by fools for creative power. The morbid fancies and melancholy scorn of a Byron, for instance, such gentry reflect back from their foggy imaginations in exaggerated and distorted feebleness of whining versicles, and so on with other lights celestial or infernal. This, however, by the way. The only rational pursuit he ever followed, and that only by fits and starts, and to gratify his faculty of "wonder," I fancy, was chemistry. A small laboratory was fitted up for him in the little summer-house you may have observed at the further corner of the lawn. This study of his, if study such desultory snatches at science may be called, led him, in his examination of vegetable bodies, to a smattering acquaintance with botany, a science of which Ellen Armitage is an enthusiastic student. They were foolishly permitted to botanize together, and the result was, that Alfred Bourdon, acting upon the principle that genius—whether sham or real—levels all merely mundane distinctions, had the impudence to aspire to the hand of Miss Armitage. His passion, sincere or simulated, has never been, I have reason to know, in the slightest degree reciprocated by its object; but so blind is vanity, that when, about six weeks ago, an éclaircissement took place, and the fellow's dream was somewhat rudely dissipated, the untoward rejection of his preposterous suit was, there is every reason to believe, attributed by both mother and son to the repugnance of Mrs. Armitage alone; and to this idiotic hallucination she has, I fear, fallen a sacrifice. Judging from the emaciated appearance of the body, and other phenomena communicated to me by her ordinary medical attendant—a blundering ignoramus, who ought to have called in assistance long before—she has been poisoned with iodine, which, administered in certain quantities, would produce precisely the same symptoms. Happily there is no mode of destroying human life which so surely leads to the detection of the murderer as the use of such agents; and of this truth the post mortem examination of the body, which takes place to-morrow morning, will, if I am not grossly mistaken, supply another vivid illustration. Legal assistance will no doubt be necessary, and I am sure I do not err in expecting that you will aid me in bringing to justice the murderer of Mary Rawdon?"

      A pressure of his hand was my only answer. "I shall call for you at ten o'clock" said he, as he put me down at my own door. I bowed, and the carriage drove off.

      "Well!" said I, as Dr. Curteis and Mr. ——the eminent surgeon entered the library at Mount Place the following morning after a long absence.

      "As I anticipated," replied the doctor with a choking voice: "she has been poisoned!"

      I started to my feet. "And the murderer?"

      "Our suspicions still point to young Bourdon; but the persons of both mother and son have been secured."

      "Apart?"

      "Yes; and I have despatched a servant to request the presence of a neighbor—a county magistrate. I expect him momently."

      After a brief consultation, we all three directed our steps to the summer-house which contained young Bourdon's laboratory. In the room itself nothing of importance was discovered; but in an enclosed recess, which we broke open, we found a curiously-fashioned glass bottle half full of iodine.

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