The Greatest Murder Mysteries of Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Mary Elizabeth Braddon
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watch or tend her (for she had refused all companionship); she sat with listless hands drooping upon the velvet cushions of her chair, her head thrown back, as if in utter abandonment of all things on the face of the wide earth, and her dark eyes staring straight before her out into the dead waste of winter snow.
So she has sat since early morning; so she will sit till her maid comes to her and leads her to her dreary bedchamber. So she sits when her uncle visits her, and tries every means in his power to awaken a smile, or bring one look of animation into that dead face. Yes, it is the face of a dead woman. Dead to hope, dead to love, dead to the past; still more utterly dead to a future, which, since it cannot restore the dead, can give her nothing.
So the short February days, which seem so long to her, fade into the endless winter nights; and for her the morning has no light, nor the darkness any shelter. The consolations of that holy Church, on which for ages past her ancestors have leant for succour as on a rock of mighty and eternal strength, she dare not seek. Her uncle’s chaplain, a white-haired old man who had nursed her in his arms a baby, and who resides at the château, beloved and honoured by all around, comes to her every morning, and on each visit tries anew to win her confidence; but in vain. How can she pour into the ears of this good and benevolent old man her dismal story? Surely he would cast her from him with contumely and horror. Surely he would tell her that for her there is no hope; that even a merciful Heaven, ready to hear the prayer of every sinner, would be deaf to the despairing cries of such a guilty wretch as she.
So, impenitent and despairing, she wears out the time, and waits for death. Sometimes she thinks of the arch tempter who smoothed the path of crime and misery in which she had trodden, and, who, in doing so seemed so much a part of herself, and so closely linked with her anguish and her revenge, that she often, in the weakness of her shattered mind, wondered if there were indeed such a person, or whether he might not be only the hideous incarnation of her own dark thoughts. He had spoken though of payment, of reward for his base services. If he were indeed human as her wretched self, why did he not come to claim his due?
As the lonely impenitent woman pondered thus in the wintry dusk, her uncle entered the chamber in which she sat.
“My dear Valerie,” he said, “I am sorry to disturb you, but a person has just arrived on horseback from Caen. He has travelled, he says, all the way from Paris to see you, and he knows that you will grant him an interview. I told him it was not likely you would do so, and that you certainly would not with my consent. Who can this person be who has the impertinence to intrude at such a time as this? His name is entirely unknown to me.”
He gave her a card. She looked at it, and read aloud—
“ ‘Monsieur Raymond Marolles.’ The person is quite right, my dear uncle; I will see him.”
“But, Valerie——!” remonstrated the marquis.
She looked at him, with her mother’s proud Spanish blood mantling in her pale cheek.
“My dear uncle,” she said quietly, “it is agreed between us, is it not, that I am in all things my own mistress, and that you have entire confidence in me? When you cease to trust me, we had better bid each other farewell, for we can then no longer live beneath the same roof.”
He looked with one imploring glance at the inflexible face, but it was fixed as death.
“Tell them,” she said, “to conduct Monsieur Marolles to this apartment. I must see him, and alone.”
The marquis left her, and in a few moments Raymond entered the room, ushered in by the groom of the chambers.
He had the old air of well-bred and fashionable indifference which so well became him, and carried a light gold-headed riding-whip in his hand.
“Mademoiselle,” he said, “will perhaps pardon my intrusion of this evening, which can scarcely surprise her, if she will be pleased to remember that more than a month has elapsed since a melancholy occurrence at the Royal Italian Opera House, and that I have some right to be impatient.”
She did not answer him immediately; for at this moment a servant entered, carrying a lamp, which he placed on the table by her side, and afterwards drew the heavy velvet curtains across the great window, shutting out the chill winter night.
“You are very much altered, mademoiselle,” said Raymond, as he scrutinized the wan face under the lamp-light.
“That is scarcely strange,” she answered, in a chilling tone. “I am not yet accustomed to crime, and cannot wear the memory of it lightly.”
Her visitor was dusting his polished riding-boot with his handkerchief as he spoke. Looking up with a smile, he said,—
“Nay, mademoiselle, I give you credit for more philosophy. Why use ugly words? Crime—poison—murder!” He paused between each of these three words, as if every syllable had been some sharp instrument—as if every time he spoke he stabbed her to the heart and stopped to calculate the depth of the wound. “There are no such words as those for beauty and high rank. A person far removed from our sphere offends us, and we sweep him from our path. We might as well regret the venomous insect which, having stung us, we destroy.”
She did not acknowledge his words by so much as one glance or gesture, but said coldly,—
“You were so candid as to confess, monsieur, when you served me, yonder in Paris, that you did so in the expectation of a reward. You are here, no doubt, to claim that reward?”
He looked up at her with so strange a light in his blue eyes, and so singular a smile curving the dark moustache which hid his thin arched lips, that in spite of herself she was startled into looking at him anxiously. He was determined that in the game they were playing she should hold no hidden cards, and he was therefore resolved to see her face stripped of its mask of cold indifference. After a minute’s pause he answered her question,—
“I am.”
“It is well, monsieur. Will you be good enough to state the amount you claim for your services?”
“You are determined, mademoiselle, it appears,” he said, with the strange light still glittering in his eyes, “you are determined to give me credit for none but the most mercenary sentiments. Suppose I do not claim any amount of money in repayment of my services?”
“Then, monsieur, I have wronged you. You are a disinterested villain, and, as such, worthy of the respect of the wicked. But since this is the case, our interview is at end. I am sorry you decline the reward you have earned so worthily, and I have the honour to wish you good evening.”
He gave a low musical laugh. “Pardon me, mademoiselle,” he said, “but really your words amuse me. ‘A disinterested villain!’ Believe me, when I tell you that disinterested villany is as great an impossibility as disinterested virtue. You are mistaken, mademoiselle, but only as to the nature of the reward I come to claim. You would confine the question to one of money. Cannot you imagine that I have acted in the hope of a higher reward than any recompense your banker’s book could afford me?”
She looked at him with a puzzled expression, but his face was hidden. He was trifling with his light riding-whip, and looking down at the hearth. After a minute’s pause he lifted his head, and glanced at her with the same dangerous smile.
“You cannot guess, then, mademoiselle, the price I claim for my services yonder?” he asked.
“No.”
“Nay, mademoiselle, reflect.”
“It would be useless. I might anticipate your claiming half my fortune, as I am, in a manner, in your power——”
“Oh, yes,” he murmured softly, interrupting her, “you are, in a manner, in my power certainly.”
“But the possibility of your claiming from me anything except money has never for a moment occurred to me.”
“Mademoiselle, when first I saw you I looked at you through an opera-glass from my place in the stalls of the Italian Opera. The glass, mademoiselle, was an excellent