Our Novelettes.

Western Star, Issue 1077, 30 October 1886, Page 2 (Supplement)

Our Novelettes.

TWO OHEISTMAS EVES.

By Howebe Davies.

Chapter I. ( Continued.)

Are you a pyschologist ? Then you will understand me when I say that when the deep grey eyes of Violet Forbes looked into mine on the sunny August evening on which she returned home from her long exile, I felt that her soul and mine had gone out to the otohr, and like two streams* of molten metal become instantly commingled beyond all power of future separation. Men lightly call this thing “ love at first sight/'' It is more than that. It is Fate! Inscrutable, if you will; irrevocable surely. The vicar’s daughter came thus into my love, never to leave it again. I love her still! Ah! you will wonder, perchance, at that when I have told you all, and some of you will call me|mad. Be it so. lam mad enough to speak the truth. Just a week before the commencement of my story, I had won from Violet her promise to be my wife as soon as the first of her pretty namesakes peeped forth in the woodland ways around Cliffaide. The vicar had given us his blessing, and on Christmas Day I was to dine with them.

The groat Festival was a time of strange associations at the old vicarage, It was Violet’s birthday and the anniversary of her mother’s death; for almost at the moment that my darling’s eyes opened on the light of this world, the sunshine of a better swept over the mother’s face,

Chapter 11. To return to the incidents of that memorable nights I had finished my solitary dinner without interruption, and had once more ensconced myself in my easy arm-chair, with my pipe and* book when that horrible feeling of impending evil suddenly deepened around mo and would not be put away. Not even the sweet thought of my little Violet’s delight when I should call later on at the vicarage “ to watch Christmas in” with her, was strong enough to lift the dead cold weight that lay upon my heart. But something came to rouse me from rny despondency, and that something was a voice. It spoke to me as distinctly as ever human lips did; and yet, if you had asked me at the moment whence it came, I could not have told you for the life of me. There was no knock at the snuggery door, no mysterious tap on the window 5 neither door nor window had been opened, and yet as I sat there in my chair, broad awake, and on the alert, a voice somewhere in the room said, “ You are wanted at the vicarage at once." I started from my seat and looked instinctively towards the door. It was bolted on the inside as was usual when I did not want to be disturbed. I drew the bolt and opening the door looked along the passage. Half-way down towards my dispensary I saw the retreating figure of Dr Forbes. A sudden chill struck me, and although unconsciously, I cried out, “ Heaven! there is something the matter with Violet! I know there is!” Then shouting to the vicar (who was evidently hurrying away), “I’ll be with you in a moment, sir,” I hastened to get on my boots and hat. As I did so, Mr Forbes turned, as if in answer to my call, and looked at me for an instant. Ah me! when shall I ever lose sight of that face as it met my gaze beneath the full blaze of a swing lamp ? There was the pallor of death on it; anguish, fright, and horror were there, as I have never seen them in a human face before or since, amid all the strange experiences of my profession. From the drawn lips there issued a word that 1 did not seem to hear so much as feel, and that one word was —“ Voilet.” It was as I feared then. She my love, my beautiful was ill, perhaps dying, and had sent for me. How serious it was, I judged at once by her father not daring to trust a messenger to summon me.

You may be sure I did not take long to get into boots, coat and hat, and to rush down the passage after the vicar, who had apparently passed through the dispensary into the street.

“ Did Dr Forbes say what was the matter V' I asked my assistant as I passed through. “ Who, sir I Dr Forbes P” queried the youth, looking a little puzzled. ‘‘Yes,’* I snapped, with a glance at the surgery clock which stood at 9.22. “Dr Forbes, the vicar. He passed out this way a minute ago. Did he say anything ?" “ He has not been here to-day, sir,” replied the young man very firmly, “ Hot been here j to-day," I repeated. “ What rubbish you are talking ! I spoke to him in the passage, not two minutes since, and he must have come through this door.

My assistant stared at me in astonishment, and I did not wait to hear his reply. I bounced into the street, mentally resolving that young Mr Howardson and I must part company. A young man who could sleep at his post, and then brazen it out in that way, was hardly the sort of assistant I cared to have about me.

From my hame in the High Street, Oliffside, to the vicarage was a distance of nearly a mile and a half, along an exposed but noc a difficult road by the cliffs. As I emerged from my surgery, I became aware that heavy snow was fulling, and I soon found that this impeded the progress I was, so anxious to make. When I had'got within half a mile of the bright, pleasant parsonage, I discerned a figure on the white and silent road iu front of mo, and could not help feeling astonished at the pace at which the aged vicar ban outstripped me. The next instant showed mo I was mistaken. It was a younger and more active man running to meet me, 1 stood rooted to the spot by the most awful sensation of terror. A great horror, which no words can describe, overwhelmed me. I knew, I felt, that these swift noiseless footsteps hastening towards me, bore tidings that would break my heart and wither-up my life. I was right in my surmise, although I did Jnot know it until many years had come and gone. Breathless nearly, and with a scared face, the vicar’s groom rushed up to me and exclaimed :

“0, Doctor Hepworth! pray bo quick! come at once, sir S The poor old master ’ave been murdered, and Miss Violet is goin’ from one lit into another. Heaven help us, sir ; but this is a dreadful night’s work, and Christmas Eve, too. Even as the meaningless tones of the man’s voice (for my mind was too paralysed to grasp on the instant their full intent) fell upon my ear, there came mingled with them the solemn but happy music of the bells. This recalled mo, and the words wore on my lips to say, “Why, I’ve just seen your master,” when discretion, even in that moment of supreme excitement, bade mo hold my peace. Quickeding our footsteps we soon reached the dear old parsonage whore Violet and I had spent such delightful hours together. It was a lovely spot on the slope of a considerable lull, facing the south and the broad, blue, ever-raetless sea. In summerlime it was embowered in roses, honeysuckle, and every other creeper that grow in those sheltered nooks along the coast. In the

wintry months the faithful ivy clung to it and kept it warm and snug.

Chapter 111. As I passed through ita portals that night, a voice within me whispered that a vague something worse than death had been there before me. How little did I guess what it was. In the well-ordered household whose placid home-life was proverbial, all was now confusion, horror, and dismay. In the library, lay the body of its master the life-blood still oozing from a ghastly cut across his throat, which I soon discovered had been inflicted by someone who must have sto'en up behind him as ha slept in the easychair where he had taken his after-dinner nap for nearly forty years. I saw from the nature of the wound, that death must have been instantaneous, without time for a prayer or a cry. I could do him no good, so I turned all my attention to my beloved, who lay on the couch in a swoon as deep, silent, and impenetrable as death. I ordered her instant removal, for I knew that if she recovered consciousness amid those awful surroundings, her reason would probably give way. _ She had always been highlv sensitive and delicate, and absolutely idolized the fond parent whom she had found in that room cruelly murdered.

I gathered from the eorv nts that Miss Violet, as they all called my pet, had gone to the study to read with her father for an hour as was her regular custom. A minute or two later her shrieks brought them to her side, and their terrified eyes behold the sight which had unmanned me when I came later on. One thing was evident, although the world I know would laugh at ray story, or look at mo in ill-disguised pity. I had seen the vicar and heard his voice in my house at the very time lohen he lay murdered in his own. There is the fact. You may make what you will of it. Subsequent enquiries failed to elicit anything beyond the discovery of one of the murdered m§m’s dinner knives (all stained with blood), just outside the half-opened library window. Whatever footsteps had passed, that way, all trace of them was obliterated by the snow which conlinued to fall heavily all through the long hours of that horrible night. There was no apparent motive for the crime, as not paper had been disturbed, not a drawer ransacked, nor a pocket rifled. An inquest hold two days later, threw no fresh light upon the awful tragedy, and went no further than returning a verdict of “ Wilful. murder against some person or persons unknown.” The ablest detectives took it up with zest, for it was enshrouded in terrible mystery, but they could do nothing with it, and finally relinquished it in despair.

All this time Violet had hovered between life and death, passing from delirium to unconsciousness, but never in her wildest moments making any reference whatsoever to the awful circumstances which had placed her in this condition.

She talked of her father constantly, but ever in her mind was he associated with the days preceding his tragical end, and mostly with the events and thoughts of her early childhood.

Happily for her, the tablets of memory retained no traces of that frightful Christinas Eve and its gruesome work. But I need not linger over this part of my story. I must hasten on. The sequel has yet to bo told.

When Violet was sufficiently recovered to be removed, I packed her off in charge of a nurse to a mild little place on the west coast, where there was plenty of cheerful society but no dissipation, and where her maternal aunt managed to subsist on the pension of an Indian colonel’s widow.

Here I frequently visited my affianced bride, and spent many a delicious hour in her presence. Ah, me! what days of intense uninterrupted happiness those were. Ae I sit with my pen in hand to-night, setting down this record of a blighted, broken life, 1 cannot believe that I am the same man, who, thirty years ago found the mere habit of existence an absolute felicity, because “ Love took up the glass of Time, and turned it in his glowing bauds." At my heart’s fireside I' brood over the ashes of a past which is terrible to contemplate even at this long interval of time, until I find, myself wondering how I lived through it all P And why ? In the second springtime after her father’s tragical and mysterious death, Violet Forbes became my wife, and I honestly believed myself to be the! proudest and happiest man in all this universe. Then commenced a life of pure, calm, delicious happiness which my own heart, and my knowledge of life, ought to have told me was far too great and good to last. But the wisest of us in this school are veritable fools. Chaptbb IV. Smoothly tho years sped on, dimmed only by one cloud. A little child had been given us within a year of our marriage, but in less then six months after, there was a sad sore place in our hearts, and a little mound in the quiet churchyard at Oliffside. I remember how bitterly I railed against Fate which had left us childless. There came a day when I thanked Heaven it was so. # * st * #

Once more it was Christmas Eve, and just seven years since that fateful night when the disturbed shade of dear old Dr Forbes bad come to me and had reawakened all the dormant superstition of my nature.

I sat in my snuggery almost precisely where I had sat seven years before, in the same chair certainly, and with that same faithful old meerschaum pipe in my mouth. Is it surprising that memory’s giant strides stopped back across the intervening years and called up e/er y incident of that harrowing past ? Arc these einotious which sometimes we woo in vain, and at other times cannot suppress, mere accidents of digestion, mere volitions of will? I think not. The step from coincidence to predestination is much shorter and easier than some people think. My wife and I had often and often talked of inexplicable mystery in which her father’s suu had gone down, but neither of us could penetrate the secret. Why did that deathly chill, which had never visited mo but once, steal over my senses that night for the second time ? I only know that it did.

As 1 sat there fighting against what I had the arrant conceit to call my weak and feeble superstition, the door belaud my chair was opened suddenly but quietly, and I heard a stealthy step on the thick carpet approaching me. Another moment and the sound of panting excited breath was close to my ear.

With a nameless terror at my heart, I sprang from my chair, and turning round, beheld a sight which made my pulses forget their function for the nonce.

My wife stood before me, a long glittering knife in her right hand, her left pressed tightly to her bosom as though to stop the wild throbbing of her heart. In her beautiful eyes, that had never looked on me but with infinite tenderness, gleamed the awful light of madness 1

Great Heaven! what a lifetime of anguish was compressed into the brief moment it

took me to realise the fearful purpose with which she had crept to the back of my chair! As I write down the words now, I seem to lire it all over again. She, whom I lored with all the ferrour of my being, better, far better than my own poor life ; she had come there to murder me! Scarcely had the fearful thought entered my mind, ere she made a wild spring toward mo, and tried to plunge the knife in,my heart. By. a dexterous movement I avoided the blow, and seized my wife in my arms. A dreadful struggle then ensued for her madness gave her superhuman strength. _ j “ Let me go,” she cried. “ I came to kill you and I will do it! I , must 1 I killed my father years, ago, and ijliy should I spare you ?'* Then she broke out into wild hysterical laughter, which froze my blood with horror. Oh! the change that insanity wrought in that sweet voice, and those plaintive tender eyes. Her loveliness was as the beauty of some splendid wild beast, thirsting for blood. “Ha! ha!” she shrieked, “I killed him, and you must die too!” My soul sank at those fiendish words, words which I felt (although uttered by a mad woman and that woman my wife) offered the clue to the old vicar’s murder, which had hitherto baffled all attempts at solution. Having secured the knife, I placed a chloroform pad to her face, and in a second or two, she lapsed into unconsciousness. How I dreaded the awakening from that stupor ! In my own arms I bore my beloved to her room and laid her down to sleep, that unnatnral sleep which could do her no good, but gave me time to think. Why need I prolong my story, and torture myself by recounting all the incidents of that hideous nightmare of my life ? Let it suffice me to say that as the sun of that Christmas Day sank to rest, my wife, the light and beauty of my home, found her repose in the deep strong arms of death. But little remains to be told.

By dint of patient and protracted inquiry I discovered that in the family of my dear dead wife (on her mother’s side) there was the accursed ;taint of insanity. Her mother had escaped it but she transmitted it to the child on whose face she had neyer looked. The child had suffered twice, and twice only from its most terrible developmenthomicidal mania! The first time it came upon her she slow her father whom she had idolised; but with the unconsciousness that supervened, hed passed away all recollection of her crime. The second time she attempted my life, and then oame the end. / Only those who have suffered as I have, will understand the gratitude to Heaven which filled my breast as I laid ray treasure away from the burden of sorrow and madness, in that quiet graveyard where, “ after Life's fitful fever, she sleeps well."