Being the Extra Christmas Number of Household Words (Bradbury & Evans) #nn (25 Dec 1854).
THE SIXTH POOR TRAVELLER
by Eliza Lynn Linton.
Was the little widow. She had been sitting by herself in the darkest corner of the room all this time; her pale face often turned anxiously toward the door, and her hollow eyes watching restlessly, as if she expected some one to appear. She was very quiet, very grateful for any little kindness, very meek in the midst of her wildness. There was a strained expression in her eyes, and a certain excited air about her altogether, that was very near insanity; it seemed as if she had once been terrified by some sudden shock, to the verge of madness.
When her turn came to speak, she began in a low voice—her eyes still glancing to the door—and spoke as if to herself rather than to the rest of us; speaking low but rapidly—somewhat like a somnambule repeating a lesson:
They advised me not to marry him (she began). They told me he was wild—unprincipled—bad; but I did not care for what they said. I loved him and I disbelieved them. I never thought about his goodness—I only knew that he was beautiful and gifted beyond all that I had ever met with in our narrow society. I loved him, with no passing school-girl fancy, but with my whole heart—my whole soul. I had no life, no joy, no hope without him, and heaven would have been no heaven to me if he had not been there. I say all this, simply to show what a madness of devotion mine was.
My dear mother was very kind to me throughout. She had loved my father, I believe, almost to the same extent; so that she could sympathise with me even while discouraging. She told me that I was wrong and foolish, and that I should repent: but I kissed away the painful lines between her eyes, and made her smile when I tried to prove to her that love was better than prudence. So we married: not so much without the consent as against the wish of my family; and even that wish withheld in sorrow and in love. I remember all this now, and see the true proportions of everything; then, I was blinded by my passions, and understood nothing.
We went away to our pretty, bright home in one of the neighbourhoods of London, near a park. We lived there for many months—I in a state of intoxication rather than of earthly happiness, and he was happy, too, then, for I am sure he was innocent, and I know he loved me. Oh, dreams—dreams!
I did not know my husband's profession. He was always busy and often absent; but he never told me what he did. There had been no settlements either, when I married. He said he had a conscientious scruple against them; that they were insulting to a man's honour and degrading to any husband. This was one of the reasons why, at home, they did not wish me to marry him. But I was only glad to be able to show him how I trusted him, by meeting his wishes and refusing, on my own account, to accept the legal protection of settlements. It was such a pride to me to sacrifice all to him. Thus I knew nothing of his real life—his pursuits or his fortunes. I never asked him any questions, as much from indifference to everything but his love as from a wifely blindness of trust. When he came home at night, sometimes very gay, singing opera songs, and calling me his little Medora, as he used when in a good humour, I was gay too, and grateful. And when he came home moody and irritable—which he used to do, often, after we had been married about three months, once even threatening to strike me, with that fearful glare in his eyes I remember so well, and used to see so often afterwards—then I was patient and silent, and never attempted even to take his hand or kiss his forehead when he bade me be still and not interrupt him. He was my law, and his approbation the sunshine of my life; so that my very obedience was selfishness; for my only joy was to see him happy, and my only duty to obey him.
My sister came to visit us. My husband had seen very little of her before our marriage; for she had often been from home when he was with us, down at Hurst Farm—that was the name of my dear mother's place—and I had always fancied they had not liked even the little they had seen of each other. Ellen was never loud or importunate in her opposition. I knew that she did not like the marriage, but she did not interfere. I remember quite well the only time she spoke openly to me on the subject how she flung herself at my knees, with a passion very rare in her, beseeching me to pause and reflect, as if I had sold myself to my ruin when I promised to be Harry's wife. How she prayed! Poor Ellen! I can see her now, with her heavy, uncurled hair falling on her neck as she knelt half undressed, her large eyes full of agony and supplication, like a martyred saint praying. Poor Ellen! I thought her prejudiced then; and this unspoken injustice has lain like a heavy crime on my heart ever since: for I know that I judged her wrongfully, and that I was ungrateful for her love.
She came to see us. This was about a year and a half after I married. She was more beautiful than ever, but somewhat sterner, as well as sadder. She was tall, strong in person, and dignified in manner. There was a certain manly character in her beauty, as well as in her mind, that made one respect and fear her too a little. I do not mean that she was masculine, or hard, or coarse: she was a true woman in grace and gentleness; but she was braver than women in general. She had more self-reliance, was more resolute and steadfast, and infinitely less impulsive, and was more active and powerful in body.
My husband was very kind to her. He paid her great attention; and sometimes I half perceived that he liked her almost better than he liked me—he used to look at her so often: but with such a strange expression in his eyes! I never could quite make it out, whether it was love or hate. Certainly, after she came his manner changed towards me. I was not jealous. I did not suspect this change from any small feeling of wounded self-love, or from any envy of my sister; but I saw it—I felt it in my heart—yet without connecting it with Ellen in any way. I knew that he no longer loved me as he used to do, but I did not think he loved her; at least, not with the same kind of love. I used to be surprised at Ellen's conduct to him. She was more than cold; she was passionately rude and unkind; not so much when I was there as when I was away. For I used to hear her voice speaking in those deep indignant tones that are worse to bear than the harshest scream of passion; and sometimes I used to hear hard words—he speaking at the first soft and pleadingly, often to end in a terrible burst of anger and imprecation. I could not understand why they quarrelled. There was a mystery between them that I did not know of; and I did not like to ask them, for I was afraid of them both—as much afraid of Ellen as of my husband—and I felt like a reed between them—as if I should have been crushed beneath any storm I might chance to wake up. So, I was silent—suffering alone, and bearing a cheerful face so far as I could.
Ellen wanted me to return home with her. Soon after she came, and soon after I heard the first dispute between them, she urged me to go back to Hurst Farm; at once, and for a long time. Weak as I am by nature, it has always been a marvel to me since, how strong I was where my love for my husband was concerned. It seemed impossible for me to yield to any pressure against him. I believe now that a very angel could not have turned me from him!
At last she said to me in a low voice: "Mary, this is madness!—it is almost sinful! Can you not see—can you not hear?" And then she stopped and would say no more, though I urged her to tell me what she meant. For this terrible mystery began to weigh on me painfully, and, for all that I trembled so much to fathom it, I had begun to feel that any truth would be better than such a life of dread. I seemed to be living among shadows; my very husband and sister not real, for their real lives were hidden from me. But I was too timid to insist on an explanation, and so things went on in their old way.
In one respect only, changing still more painfully, still more markedly; in my husband's conduct to me. He was like another creature altogether to me now, he was so altered. He seldom spoke to me at all, and he never spoke kindly. All that I did annoyed him, all that I said irritated him; and once (the little widow covered her face with her hands and shuddered) he spurned me with his foot and cursed me, one night in our own room, when I knelt weeping before him, supplicating him for pity's sake to tell me how I had offended him. But I said to myself that he was tired, annoyed, and that it was irritating to see a loving woman's tears; and so I excused him, as oftentimes before, and went on loving him all the same—God forgive me for my idolatry!
Things had been very bad of late between Ellen and my husband. But the character of their discord was changed. Instead of reproaching, they watched each other incessantly. They put me in mind of fencers—my husband on the defensive.
"Mary," said my sister to me suddenly, coming to the sofa where I was sitting embroidering my poor baby's cap. "What does your Harry do in life? What is his profession?"
She fixed her eyes on me earnestly.
"I do not know, darling," I answered, vaguely. "He has no profession that I know of."
"But what fortune has he, then? Did he not tell you what his income was, and how obtained, when he married? To us, he said only that he had so much a year—a thousand a year; and he would say no more. But, has he not been more explicit with you?"
"No," I answered, considering; for, indeed, I had never thought of this. I had trusted so blindly to him in everything that it would have seemed to me, a profound insult to have even asked of his affairs. "No, he never told me anything about his fortune, Ellen. He gives me money when I want it, and is always generous. He seems to have plenty; whenever it is asked for, he has it by him, and gives me even more than I require."
Still her eyes kept looking at me in that strange manner. "And this is all you know?"
"Yes—all. What more should I wish to know? Is he not the husband, and has he not absolute right over everything! I have no business to interfere." The words sound harsher now than they did then, for I spoke lovingly.
Ellen touched the little cap I held. "Does not this make you anxious?" she said. "Can you not fear as a mother, even while you love as a wife?"
"Fear, darling! Why? What should I fear, or whom? What is there, Ellen, on your heart?" I then added passionately. "Tell me at once; for I know that you have some terrible secret concealed from me; and I would rather know anything—whatever it may be—than live on, longer, in this kind of suspense and anguish! It is too much for me to bear, Ellen."
She took my hands. "Have you strength?" she said, earnestly. "Could you really bear the truth?" Then seeing my distress, for I had fallen into a kind of hysterical fit—I was very delicate then—she shook her head in despair, and, letting my hands fall heavily on my lap, said in an under tone, "No, no! she is too weak—too childish!" Then she went upstairs abruptly; and I heard her walking about her own room for nearly an hour after, in long steady steps.
I have often thought that, had she told me then, and taken me to her heart—her strong, brave, noble heart—I could have derived courage from it, and could have borne the dreadful truth I was forced to know afterwards. But the strong are so impatient with us! They leave us too soon—their own strength revolts at our weakness; so we are often left, broken in this weakness, for want of a little patience and sympathy.
Harry came in, a short time after Ellen had left me. "What has she been saying?" he cried, passionately. His eyes were wild and bloodshot; his beautiful black hair flung all in disorder about his face.
"Dear Harry, she has said nothing about you," I answered, trembling. "She only asked what was your profession, and how much we had a year. That was all."
"Why did she ask this? What business was it of hers?" cried Harry, fiercely. "Tell me;" and he shook me roughly; "what did you answer her, little fool?"
"Oh, nothing;" and I began to cry: it was because he frightened me. "I said, what is true, that I knew nothing of your affairs, as indeed what concern is it of mine? I could say nothing more, Harry."
"Better that than too much," he muttered; and then he flung me harshly back on the sofa, saying, "Tears and folly and weakness! The same round—always the same! Why did I marry a mere pretty doll—a plaything—no wife!"
And then he seemed to think he had said too much: for he came to me and kissed me, and said that he loved me. But, for the first time in our married life his kisses did not soothe me, nor did I believe his assurances.
All that night I heard Ellen walk steadily and unresting through her room. She never slackened her pace, she never stopped, she never hurried; but, the same slow measured tread went on; the firm foot, yet light, falling as if to music, her very step the same mixture of manliness and womanhood as her character.
After this burst of passion Harry's tenderness to me became unbounded; as if he wished to make up to me for some wrong. I need not say how soon I forgave him, nor how much I loved him again. All my love came back in one full boundless tide; and the current of my being set towards him again as before. If he had asked me for my life then, as his mere fancy, to destroy, I would have given it him. I would have lain down and died, if he had wished to see the flowers grow over my grave.
My husband and Ellen grew more estranged as his affection seemed to return to me. His manner to her was defying; hers to him contemptuous. I heard her call him villain once, in the garden below the windows; at which he laughed—his wicked laugh, and said "tell her, and see if she will believe you!"
I was sitting in the window, working. It was a cold damp day in the late autumn, when those chill fogs of November are just beginning; those fogs with the frost in them, that steal into one's very heart. It was a day when a visible blight is in the air, when death is abroad everywhere, and suffering and crime. I was alone in the drawing-room. Ellen was upstairs, and my husband, as I believed, in the City. But I have remembered since, that I heard the hall-door softly opened, and a footstep steal quietly by the drawing room up the stairs. The evening was just beginning to close in—dull, gray, and ghostlike; the dying daylight melting into the long shadows that stalked like wandering ghosts about the fresh-made grave of nature. I sat working still, at some of those small garments about which I dreamed such fond dreams, and wove such large hopes of happiness; and as I sat, while the evening fell heavy about me, a mysterious shadow of evil passed over me, a dread presentiment, a consciousness of ill, that made me tremble, as if in ague—angry at myself though for my folly. But, it was reality. It was no hysterical sinking of the spirits that I felt; no mere nervousness or cowardice; it was something I had never known before; a knowledge, a presence, a power, a warning word, a spirit's cry, that had swept by me as the fearful evil marched on to its conclusion.
I heard a faint scream up stairs. It was so faint I could scarcely distinguish it from a sudden rush of wind through an opening door, or the chirp of a mouse behind the wainscot. Presently, I heard the same sound again; and then a dull muffled noise overhead, as of some one walking heavily, or dragging a heavy weight across the floor. I sat petrified by fear. A nameless agony was upon me that deprived me of all power of action. I thought of Harry and I thought of Ellen, in an inextricable cypher of misery and agony; but I could not have defined a line in my own mind; I could not have explained what it was I feared. I only knew that it was sorrow that was to come, and sin. I listened, but all was still again; once only, I thought I heard a low moan, and once a muttering voice—which I know now to have been my husband's, speaking passionately to himself.
And then his voice swept stormfully through the house, crying wildly, "Mary, Mary! Quick here! Your sister! Ellen!"
I ran up-stairs. It seems to me now, that I almost flew. I found Ellen lying on the floor of her own room, just inside the door; her feet towards the door of my husband's study, which was immediately opposite her room. She was fainting; at least I thought so then. We raised her up between us; my husband trembling more than I; and I unfastened her gown, and threw water on her face, and pushed back her hair; but she did not revive. I told Harry to go for a doctor. A horrid thought was stealing over me; but he lingered, as I fancied, unaccountably and cruelly, though I twice asked him to go. Then, I thought that perhaps he was too much overcome; so I went to him, and kissed him, and said, "She will soon be better, Harry," cheerfully, to cheer him. But I felt in my heart that she was no more.
At last, after many urgent entreaties, and after the servants had come up, clustering in a frightened way round the bed—but he sent them away again immediately—he put on his hat, and went out, soon returning with a strange man; not our own doctor. This man was rude and coarse, and ordered me aside, as I stood bathing my sister's face, and pulled her arm and hand roughly, to see how dead they fell, and stooped down close to her lips—I thought he touched them even—all in a violent and insolent way, that shocked me and bewildered me. My husband stood in the shadow, ghastly pale, but not interfering.
It was too true, what the strange man had said so coarsely. She was dead. Yes; the creature that an hour ago had been so full of life, so beautiful, so resolute, and young, was now a stiffening corpse, inanimate and dead, without life and without hope. Oh! that word had set my brain on fire! Dead! here, in my house, under my roof—dead so mysteriously, so strangely—why? How? It was a fearful dream, it was no truth that lay there. I was in a nightmare; I was not sane; and thinking how ghastly it all was, I fainted softly on the bed, no one knowing, till some time after, that I had fallen, and was not praying. When I recovered I was in my own room, alone. Crawling feebly to my sister's door, I found that she had been washed and dressed, and was now laid out on her bed. It struck me that all had been done in strange haste; Harry telling me the servants had done it while I fainted. I knew afterwards that he had told them it was I, and that I would have no help. The mystery of it all was soon to be unravelled.
One thing I was decided on—to watch by my sister this night. It was in vain that my husband opposed me; in vain that he coaxed me by his caresses, or tried to terrify me with angry threats. Something of my sister's nature seemed to have passed into me; and unless he had positively prevented me by force, no other means would have had any effect. He gave way to me at last—angrily—and the night came on and found me sitting by the bedside watching my dear sister.
How beautiful she looked! Her face, still with the gentle mark of sorrow on it that it had in life, looked so grand! She was so great, so pure; she was like a goddess sleeping; she was not like a mere woman of this earth. She did not seem to be dead; there was life about her yet, for there was still the look of power and of human sympathy that she used to have when alive. The soul was there still, and love, and knowledge.
By degrees a strange feeling of her living presence in the room came over me. Alone in the still midnight, with no sound, no person near me, it seemed as if I had leisure and power to pass into the world beyond the grave. I felt my sister near me; I felt the passing of her life about me, as when one sleeps, but still is conscious that another life is weaving in with ours. It seemed as if her breath fell warm on my face; as if her shadowy arms held me in their clasp; as if her eyes were looking through the darkness at me; as if I held her hands in mine, and her long hair floated round my forehead. And then, to shake off these fancies, and convince myself that she was really dead, I looked again and again at her lying there: a marble corpse, ice-cold with the lips set and rigid, and the death band beneath her chin. There she was, stiff in her white shroud, the snowy linen pressing so lightly on her; no life within, no warmth about her, and all my fancies were vain dreams. Then I buried my face in my hands, and wept as if my heart was breaking. And when I turned away my eyes from her, the presence came around me again. So long as I watched her, it was not there; I saw the corpse only; but when I shut this out from me, then it seemed as if a barrier had been removed, and that my sister floated near me again.
I had been praying, sitting thus in these alternate feelings of her spiritual presence and her bodily death, when, raising my head and looking towards the farther corner of the room, I saw, standing at some little distance, my sister Ellen. I saw her distinctly, as distinctly as you may see that red fire blaze. Sadly and lovingly her dark eyes looked at me, sadly her gentle lips smiled, and by look and gesture too she showed me that she wished to speak to me. Strange, I was not frightened, it was so natural to see her there, that for the moment I forgot that she was dead.
"Ellen!" I said, "what is it?"
The figure smiled. It came nearer. Oh! do not say it was fancy! I saw it advance; it came glidingly; I remembered afterwards that it did not walk—but it came forward—to the light, and stood not ten paces from me. It looked at me still, in the same sad gentle way, and somehow—I do not know whether with the hand or by the turning of the head—it showed me the throat, where were the distinct marks of two powerful hands. And then it pointed to its heart; and looking, I saw the broad stain of blood above it. And then I heard her voice—I swear I was not mad—I heard it, I say to you distinctly—whisper softly, "Mary!" and then it said, still more audibly, "Murdered!"
And then the figure vanished, and suddenly the whole room was vacant. That one dread word had sounded as if forced out by the pressure of some strong agony,—like a man revealing his life's secret when dying. And when it had been spoken, or rather wailed forth, there was a sudden sweep and chilly rush through the air; and the life, the soul, the presence, fled. I was alone again with Death. The mission had been fulfilled; the warning had been given; and then my sister passed away,—for her work with earth was done.
Brave and calm as the strongest man that ever fought on a battle-field, I stood up beside my sister's body. I unfastened her last dress, and threw it back from her chest and shoulders; I raised her head and took off the bandage from round her face; and then I saw deep black bruises on her throat, the marks of hands that had grappled her from behind, and that had strangled her. And then I looked further, and I saw a small wound below the left breast, about which hung two or three clots of blood, that had oozed up, despite all care and knowledge in her manner of murder. I knew then she had first been suffocated, to prevent her screams, and then stabbed where the wound would bleed inwardly, and show no sign to the mere bystander.
I covered her up carefully again. I laid the pillow smooth and straight, and laid the heavy head gently down. I drew the shroud close above the dreadful mark of murder. And then—still as calm and resolute as I had been ever since the revelation had come to me—I left the room, and passed into my husband's study. It was on me to discover all the truth.
His writing-table was locked. Where my strength came from, I know not; but, with a chisel that was lying on the table, I prized the drawer and broke the lock. I opened it. There was a long and slender dagger lying there, red with blood; a handful of woman's hair rudely severed from the head, lay near it. It was my sister's hair!—that wavy silken uncurled auburn hair that I had always loved and admired so much! And near to these again, were stamps, and dies, and moulds, and plates, and handwritings with facsimiles beneath, and bankers' cheques, and a heap of leaden coin, and piles of incomplete bank-notes; and all the evidences of a coiner's and a forger's trade,—the suspicion of which had caused those bitter quarrellings between poor Ellen and my husband—the knowledge of which had caused her death.
With these things I saw also a letter addressed to Ellen in my husband's handwriting. It was an unfinished letter, as if it had displeased him, and he had made another copy. It began with these words—no fear that I should forget them; they are burnt into my brain—"I never really loved her, Ellen; she pleased me, only as a doll would please a child; and I married her from pity, not from love. You, Ellen, you alone could fill my heart; you alone are my fit helpmate. Fly with me Ellen—." Here, the letter was left unfinished; but it gave me enough to explain all the meaning of the first weeks of my sister's stay here, and why she had called him villain, and why he had told her that she might tell me, and that I would not believe.
I saw it all now. I turned my head, to see my husband standing a few paces behind me. Good Heaven! I have often thought, was that man the same man I had loved so long and fondly?
The strength of horror, not of courage, upheld me. I knew he meant to kill me, but that did not alarm me; I only dreaded lest his hand should touch me. It was not death, it was he I shrank from. I believe if he had touched me then, I should have fallen dead at his feet. I stretched out my arms in horror, to thrust him back, uttering a piercing shriek; and while he made an effort to seize me, overreaching himself in the madness of his fury, I rushed by him, shrieking still, and so fled away into the darkness, where I lived, oh! for many many months!
When I woke again, I found that my poor baby had died, and that my husband had gone none knew where. But the fear of his return haunted me. I could get no rest day or night for dread of him; and I felt going mad with the one hard thought for ever pitilessly pursuing me—that i should fall again into his hands. I put on widow's weeds—for indeed am I too truly widowed! and then I began wandering about; wandering in poverty and privation, expecting every moment to meet him face to face; wandering about, so that I may escape the more easily when the moment does come.