LIKE AND UNLIKE.*

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIV, Issue 8082, 24 September 1887, Page 3 (Supplement)

LIKE AND UNLIKE.*

BY M. E. BR ADDON, Author Ol "Lady Andley'a Secret,"."] Wyllard'4

Weird," &c., &c.

CHAPTER XXVll.—(Continued.) AN UNFINISHED LETTER.

Valentine looked up at the Lamb a 8 he passed. Yes, there were lights in the window of the sittingroom facing the bridge, the room that St. Austell and Beeching had occupied three years ago. His wife's lovor was there. Her lover ! He had no doubt as to their guilty love now. That revelation about the horse W as damning proof of St. Austell's perfidy, even if it left Helen's conduct still doubtful. To Valentine it seemed that they were leagued against him, and that they had laughed at him for his blindness, at him, the man who prided himself upon his knowledge of horse-flesh, and who been fooled and duped so easily. Nor was this all. He looked back and remembered many inoidents, looks, words, arrivals and departures, meetings that had seemed accidental, oiroumstancesof all kinds, trifling enough in themselves, yet signs and tokens of secret guilt. He had been so certain of his wife's allegiance, so secure, as to have been the very last to observe those indications which had been obvious to all the rest of the world.

' "If I had known that all women were But no, there is one good woman in the world— my mother ; and I have grown np in the belief that all well-bred women were like her. 1 thought that it was in the nature of a wellborn girl to be chaste and true. I ought to have known differently. God knows, I have heard stories enough— I thought that there was a line of demarcation, a gulf between the sheep and the goats. He ground his teeth in an agony of rage, not more infuriated at the idea of his wife a falsehood than at the thought of his own blind confidence. The hard-worked old horse was rattling along the road at a good pace, eager to get his business done and go back to his stable, but to Valentine's impationee it seemed as if he were crawling. At last the fly stopped short, and the driver got down | to open the gates leading into the avenue. The gates were rarely locked at night. The lodge windows were dark. Before they were halfway down the aveune, Valentine called to the man to stop, and got out while he was pulling up his horse. " I'll walk'the rest of the way," he said, giving the man a shilling out of the loose silver in his pocket. " Good-night." "Good-night, sir, and thank'ee," and the horse-of-all-work turned and cantered gaily homeward, while the driver thought what a pleasant man Mr. Belfield was, and what a cheery voice and manner he had. Mr. Belfield was walking down the avenue at a pace that was almost a run. He wanted to be face to face with his false wife—to surprise her by the suddenness of his coming, to stand before her without a moment's warning, strong in his knowledge of her guilt. That was the one passionate craving of his mind, the one hope for which he existed at this moment. After that there would be another meeting, between him and St. Austell, a meeting which must end in blood. Yes, straight before him in the near distance he saw inevitable bloodshed. No modern vengeance beaten out inch by inch, thin as gold leaf under the gold-beater's hammer ; no thirty days' scandal in the law courts with all its pettiness of foul details and lying and counter lying of hirelings; not for him the modern husband's mode of retribution, but swift, sharp vengeance, such as one reads of in old Italian chronicles. Vengeance as speedy and sudden, if not as secret, as those dealings between man and man which made the glory of Venice in the good old days of the Council of Ten, when every seducer wont with his life in his hand, and knew not whether the sun that rose upon his guilty pleasure might not set upon his untimely grave in the canal yonder, and when every false wifo had a daily expectation of poison in the domestic wine cup, or a dagger under the matrimonial pillow. Valentine Belfieid had no uncertainty of mind as to the manner of dealing with St. Austell. They two would have to stand face to face upon some quiot, easily accessible spot in Franco or Belgium, where a brace of pistols would settle all scores. How ha was to deal with his wife was a more complex question, but for the moment his desire was only to confront her, and to wring the acknowledgment of her guilt from those false lips. The house was dark for the most part, as he had expected to find it, but there were lights in the library -windows, and in the windows of his wife a rooms above the library. She was not at rest then, late as it was. Her guilty conscience would not let her rest, perhaps. . He knocked at the class door m the lobby next the library, a door which stood open all day in fine weather, and by which his brother went in and out of the garden twenty times a day, loving the old world garden almost at' he loved his books. He heard the library door open, and Adrian footsteps approaching, and then the shutter was taken down and the door opened cautiously a little way. " Who is there ?" "Valentine."

"Valentine!" cried Adrian, throwing open tbo door, and holding out both hands to his brother, " this is indeed a surprise. Why didn't you telegraph '! Helen wont to bed nearly three hours ago.'' - " Her candles are .'till burning, anyhow," answered Valentine, gloomily. "I take it I shall find her awake, late as it is. _ Goodnight. We'll reserve all our talk till the morning." " Won't you come into the library for ten minutes or so? All the servants are in bed, no doubt, but I might get you something, perhaps —wine, or brandy and water." Not a thing. Good-night." His strange manner mystified Adrian, and impressed him with a foreboding of trouble. Never had he seen so dreadful an expression in his brother's face—the contracted brows, the lipid, bloodlesß lips, the fixed look of the haggard eyes, staring straight forward, as if intent upon some hideous vision. Adrian watched him as he went up the little private staircase which led only to that one suite of rooms in the library wing. Watched, and felt inclined to follow him, and yet held back, not liking to pry into his brother's secrets. What could that trouble bo which had wrought such an evil influence upon Valentine. Money troubles, perhaps— turf losses. Adrian had heard enough while he was in London to know that his brother was the associate of racing men, and it was easy enough to guess that he had involved himself in turf transactions.

Yet there was that in his face which indicated stronger passions than money troubles should cause in any reasonable being. But then, "Valentine was apt to give way to unreasonable wrath against anything that came between him and his wishes.

" ( It is nothing of any moment, perhaps," thought Adrian. "He will be in a better temper to-morrow morning." He told himself this ; yet so intense was his sympathy with his brother that he went back to the library troubled and agitated, with his heart beating violently. He tried to go on with the book he had been reading when Valentine knocked at the door, but his thoughts were with his brother and his brother's wife in the rooms above him. He found himself listening to their footsteps, for the nound of their voices, which reached him now and then, faintly audible in the stillness of the night. The casement was open in the mnllioned window yonder, and there may have been an • open window in the room above.

Valentine opened the door of his wife's bedroom suddenly, and stood on the threshold looking at her. . She wan sitting at a writing table in the middle of the room, in a loose white dressing gown, her hair'falling upon her shoulders. The room was in supreme disorder, drawers pulled out to their fullest extent, wardrobe doors open, a litter of discarded odds and ends upon the floor, and trunks packed as if for a journey. She heard the door open, looked up ana law her husband standing in the doorway, with tha.t blanched and angry look which had so impressed Adrian. , She started to her feet, ntiring at him with dilated eyes, and her hands stretched out tremulously above the paper on which she had been writing. "Yes, it is I, your husband," he said. "You expected someone else perhaps. You thought it was your lover."

His quick eye caught that motion of her hands, the fingers spread wide as if to con* ceal the writing on the table, while she stood motionless, paralysed with fear. He was at her side before she had recovered from the shook of his appearance, and had snatched that half-written letter from the table.

The ink was wet in the last lines, and there was a long tremulous stroke where her hand had faltered as she looked up and saw him in the doorway.

" Don't read it; don't read it, for God's sake, Valentine," sho cried, piteously.

"Not read a letter which is addressed to myself," he said. " You are a very curious woman, Mrs. Belfield, and that is a very curious request. Stay where you are," he cried, gripping her wrist fiercely, as «be made a terror stricken movement towards the door; "when 1 have read your letter I shall know how to answer it;."

He held her there pinioned, the delicate wrist clasped as in a vice, while he read the following lines

" Ab you have long ceased to care for me, Valentine, it can hardly be any great loss to you to part with me for ever. You have lived your own life, and have left me to live mine. You have done nothing to make my life happy, or to prove your regard for me. For a long time I went on loving you, patiently, devotedly, blind to your selfishness and neglect, waiting and hoping for a day that never came. But at last my eyes were open, and I began to understand your character and my own folly in loving you. And then another love was offered me, unselfish, generous, devoted, self-sacrificing, and for the first time I knew what the passion of a life«time means. When you read this I shall be far away from this house —far away from England, i hopewith the man who loves me well enough to sacrifice his social position for my sake, and for whose love I am willing to forfeit my good name. I have but one regret in taking this step, dreadful as its consequences may be; and that is my sorrow in proving myself unworthy of your mother's affection. To lose her esteem is very bitter. From you I have nothing to lose, for you have given ma nothing—" He stood with this letter in his right hand, and his left holding her wrist, stood looking in her face, after he had read the last word, she looking back at him, terror changed to defiance. She had been and startled at his sudden entrance, but it was not in her nature to turn craven,

Do you mean this he asked. " Every word of ye 3, every word. You have neglected me, trampled upon me —treated me as if you had bought me in a market for your slave. Yes, while all the best men in London were treating me like a queen, while I bad followers and flatterers enough to turn any woman's head, you did not see that there was danger—you did not care. But there was one who caredone whom I love as I never loved you."

"And you loved me as you never loved my brother, and yon will change again, and tire of St. Austell as you tired of Adrian, and then of me. You are a wanton by nature, bat you have reckoned without your host, you fair, false devil. You shall not live to dishonour me."

He had his Malacca cane in his hand, a cane with a loaded head. Did he forget that tho gold top was loaded,,with lead, as he raised the cane and struck at her furiously in blind, ungovernable rage, struck at the fair, pale brow with all the force of his strong arm.

She reeled under the blow, and than fell backwards with a dull thud, fell without a cry, and lay on the Persian carpet looking up at him with wide open eyes, and a red gash upon her forehead. It was done. He stood looking down at her for an instant, and then his brain reeled, and he staggered back against a sofa, and Bank upon it, half unconscious, with a noise like the surging of the sea in his ears, and a great light in his eyes. Then came darkness, through which he heard hurrying footsteps, and an open door, and then nothing. He re-opened his eyes after what seemed a long interval, and saw Adrian kneeling beside that prostrate figure, holding a handmirror above the white lips. "Adrian he faltered, hoarsely, as his brother rose slowly to his feet and faced him. They stood looking at each other, both faces rigid with horror ; so like and yet unlike, even when the same overmastering emotion possessed each in the sume degree. They might have been the principle of good and of evil encountering eacu other, love and hate, right and wrong, compassion and cruelty, any two qualities of human nature that are most antagonistic. "You have killed her," said Adrian, quietly, almost in a whisper. "Are you sure?" gasped the other. "Is there no hope ? Is she really dead ?" "Yes. Not a breath upon the glass," laying down the mirror as he spoke "Not the faintest throb of tho heart. Look at those glassy eyes Murderer 1" "It was not murder ! I struck her down in my fury—struck at her as at an infamous woman who had betrayed me—who shamefully defied me. Yes, she had defied me, Adrian; brazened her guilt; told me she loved him as she had never loved me. I surprised her as she was writing that letter " —pointing to the open letter-on the table, '' coolly announcing her intention to dishonour me.

" She stood there, looking at me, repeating this, and I had that devilish cane in my hand, and I lifted it and struck at her; struck at her blindly, »3 I would have struck at a strong man. I struck her on the head, and she fell. I knew no more, till I looked up out or thick darkness and saw her lying there and yon beside her." " Well, you have killed her. That is how neglect aud cruelty have ended," said Adrian, "ff she sinned against you—if she would have left you for another man—it is you must bear the burden of her sin. You are the greater sinner. But now you have to consider how you lire to answer for what you have done. The straighte3t course will be the best. I will go aud awaken Mrs. Marrable, and then send a mounted groom for the doctor. Ho ca.l do nothing; but it is our duty to Lave him here as soon as possible." Valentine flung himself between bis brothe T and the door.

•'Wake up old Marrablo! Send for the doctor he echoed. "Are you mad, Adrian ? Do you want to put a rope round my neck ?" 41 I want to save your neck, and your Conscience, too, as far as I can," answered Adrian, with calmness and resolution, the calm of an intellectual nature which rises with the importance of a crisis. " You mast face the situation honestly, awful as it is. There ia no other way. There must be a coroner's inquest, and you will have to answer for what you have done. You will be sure of sympathy in your character of an outraged husband, when that letter has been read. There will be a verdict of man« slaughter, perhaps; impossible, I fear, to avoid that ; and you may have to go to prison for a short time." " Was there ever such a fool ?" cried Valentine. "Do you think lam going to offer my neck to the noose like that. 'I am very sorry, gentlemen of the jury, that I have had the misfortune to kill my wife. 1 hope you will be civil enough to call the matter manslaughter, and to let me off easily; but if you choose to call it murder, here lam, ready for the hangman.' No, my good brother ; wo must manage things better than that. We won't call up old Marrable, or send for the family doctor. We have the best park of the night before us yet. . We must dispose of—that!" •He pointed with quivering finger to the pallid form lying on the carpet. It was a small Persian carpet of delicate colouring on a white ground, and the blood from that deep cut upon the temple had made a dark crimson patch on the whiteness. How harshly that crude red showed against the half tints of the oriental pattern ! "I will have nothing to do with you unless you take the straight coarse," said Adrian. • " Oh, yes, you will. You are my brother, the other half of myself, bound to me by the most mysterious tie that humanity knows. ¥ou must help me. You must go with me, band and foot, heart and brain ! What, would you have my mother wako to-morrow to be told that her son had given himself up ;o answer for the murder of his wife? Do you ihink such a blow as that would not kill her, is surely as that fatal blow killed yonder vanton?'' pointing scornfully to his victim.

" Valentine, are you a man or a devil V , "There ia a tonch of the latter in my nature, perhaps. When you were made all of milk and honey, I took the gall and wormwood for my share. I say you must help me, and without the loss of a minute, or if you won't help me, you may look on. At least, I suppose you will hold your tongue." "I tell you again, Valentino, your only safety is in facing your danger, and answer* ing for what you have done." "And I tell you again that I am not Bach » fool as to take a fool's advice."

! lie knelt beside the prostrate form and rolled the carpet round those lifeless limbs. Calmly, with a diabolical decision and promptness, he arranged his ghastly burden. "Open the door,"he said, "and bring a candle." Adrian obeyed, instinctively, mechanically. His conscience and his intellect alike revolted against his brother's actions, yet he submitted and went with him. Perhaps he may have argued that when a man's life is at stake he has the right to follow his own judgment rather than any other man's counsel. The awfufnesß of the stake may give exceptional rights. For the trained athlete, that slender form was no difficult burden. Valentine carried his dead wife with her head lying across his shoulder, the long, loose hair falling like a veil over those marble features, the pallid, waxen band and arm was on his breast. His own face was of almost as deadly a hue as that pallid arm. His brows were bent, his lips sternly set, his eyes dark with desperate resolve. He would put that ghastly evidence of his crime away anywhere, anyhow, to save himself, his own full-blooded, fiercely throbbing life, this vigorous all--1 enjoying entity which death would < reduce to nothingness and everlasting oblivion. Brave as a Roman to endure pain, to face danger, to live down disgrace, Valentine turned craven at the thought of life's inex« orable end. He would ward off that to the uttermost hour. He would fight for that as the fox fights, with dauntless courage and iuexhaustible cunning. What was this burden that he carried, cold and still, upon his burning, passionately throbbing heart ? What was this that he should think of it, or care for it, or be sorry for its sake ? A weak, false woman, slain . upon the threshold of her caught like a bird in the net, just at the moment when she was going to inflict upon him the deepest wrong that woman can do to man. No. He gave not one thought to his victim. He carried her as the butcher carries the lamb to the slaughterhouse. Slowly, deliberately, with steady footsteps in the corridor and on the stairs, he carried his burden through the silent house, motioning to Adrian to precede him with the candle, to open doors for him, to withdraw bolts—and so the brothers went in silence out into the silent night. j There were stars shining above the wooded hills —the night was not all silence. They could hear the ripple of the river in the valley; a soft, soothing sound, sweetest lullaby, music for lovers and happy people. The summer wind came up out of the valley like a Titan's sigh, soft and slow, and full of melancholy. Adrian left the candle burning on a table in the hall, and followed his brother across the threshold. Hp closed tho door behind him, lest the breaking of the hinges might awaken any member of that sleeping household. The door would open easily from the outside; there would be no difficulty in returning to their rooms by-and-bve, when that ghastly load had been put away. He found himself considering all the consequences- calmly and deliberately, as if it were no new experience for him to be concerned in the <;iacealment of a murder. Involuntarily he recalled old historical mur ders, which his imagination had dwelt upon fascinated by their morbid interest. He remembered Thurtell's crime, and the body hidden in the pond in the garden, and then taken out of that pond and carried off to a safer hiding place. He remembered that still more ghastly murder done by the two Mannings, husband and wife; the grave dug beforehand for tho victim ; the snare of sensual pleasures :the bushel of lime. And now his brother, the other half of his own being, the creature he had loved and clung to and admired for the strength of his manhood, and envied for nature's bounteous gifts—this being so near to himself had sunk to the level of those heroes of the Newgate Calendar, and had to bend his mind, as they had bent theirs, to the concealment of their crime. I

They had walked a long way in silence, half way down the avenue and then across the grass to a lower level, descending that wooded gorge through which the river ran, darkened with foliage. They had reached the path beside the stream without a word spoken by either. But here Adrian broke that gloomy silence, "For God's sake, Valentine, consider what you are doing, and the fatal consequences that may come of it. Do $ou know that you are branding yourself for ever with the crime of murder ? There cau be no question of manslaughter — justifiable homicide — after this."

"If you will hold your tongue, there will be no question of anything—in relation to my wife—except that she ran away from me. There will be her own handwriting to show how she eloped with her lover. Yes, that will bo there to answer for her, in black and white, in her own hand, when ahe is rotting among the water rats." "Valentine, be bravo, be honest. Go back. Take her back. Tell the world what you have done. It will be better, wiser, safer !"

"It would be the act of an idiot. Go and scrape the mat. off some of that old armour in tne hall, Adrian, and mount Cinderella, and go clattering along the high roads in quest of adventures. You areof the kind of temper that makes lunatics of Don Quixots'3 bread. I am not." For not one instant had he slackened his pace or faltered in his purpose, as he argued with hia brother. He knew every yard of water in than swift, deep stream, bearing down with ceaseless impetus from the quite hills yonder, from solitudes that seemed like holy places in the stillness of deepest night. He knew every bend and every pool. His experience »3 an angler had made him fami. liar with all. There was one deep pool where he had had many a tussle with a gigantic pike, a shining, scaly monster, that sulked among the rushes and set him at defiance. He had landed such an one many a time in that shadowy corner, where the reeds grew thick and tall. It was there she should lie. That should be her grave, deep and secret, deep in the shiny bottom of the river, entangled among water weeds, wedged in with pebbles—safe, hidden for ever from the light and the world. He laid his burden upon the grassy slope beside the pool, and then began to collect a score or two of pebbles, the largest he could find along the path, taking them at longish intervals, lest the keen eye of investigation should observe that the atones had been removed from the coarse gravel. Then, when he had got together as many as ho wanted he tied, them in his handkerchief and fastened them to the dead girl's girdle. Then he wrapped the carpet more securely around her, tied it with a large silk handkerchief from his neck, and so secured, dragged the corpse to the brink of the water and gently pushed it into that cold, shadowy depth. It sank like a plummet. The water rippled and bubbled about it for a minute or bo, and there was a noise of rushing creatures, or a rustle of reeds and water-weeds, and then all was silent. Adrian stood with his back against a willow trunk, watching his brother's movements with wide-open awe-strickon eyes, the incarnation of speechless horror. When the water had ceased to ripple round the spot whore that ghastly load had gone down, Valentine turned his back upon the rushy bank, and walked quickly up and down the narrow path, looking right and left, peering into the shadowy recesses between the great brown branches of oak and elm, the faintly shining silver of the beech tree's, looking less by some diabolical chance they should have been followed and watched. He stood here and there for a minute or so, listening intently, as he had listened many a time for the hounds in the woodland or on the moor; but be could hear neither breath nor motion of any living creature, nothing but the faint whisper of the wind among the leaves. Suddenly came a far off sound, momently louder, steady, persistent, inevitable. It was the sound of an express train travelling along the line that ran at the bottom of the valley, on a level with tho water. •' The mail from Exeter," said Valentine. " Half-past oho." They walked back by the way they had come, in silence, till they came to a point, midway between the river and the Abbey, where the path divided, one way leading to the park gates, the other to the house, Here Valentine stopped abruptly. "Good-night and good-bye," he said. " Where are yon going ?" "I don't know. You needn't be afraid. If there should be awkward questions asked, or suspicions aroused, I will come back to answer •■■hem. I won't leave you in the lurch." . "I am not afraid of that; but you had better come back to the house with me. It will bo no worse for you to bear than for me," " That's your idea," answered Valentine, shortly, as be vanished in the darkness of the shrubbery path, 1 [To be continued.]