"Where is he to be found, _amico_?"
"At the convent of the Gesuiti close by."
"So!--a Jesuit?"
"A Jesuit, Signore; so eloquent, so learned, so holy, and yet so young--so young! A holier man does not live. Though his body still walks upon earth, his soul already lives in heaven."
"I should like to see him," mused the Englishman. "He might suggest something--these Jesuits are keen and far-sighted; at all events, it is worth the effort. I will go round to the Gesuiti, _amico_, to hear if your good padre can help us."
"Our blessed Lady and all the saints reward you, dear Signore!"
exclaimed the poor father, humbly attempting to kiss the hand which Hugh Girdlestone extended to him at parting.
But the Englishman s.n.a.t.c.hed it hastily away.
"Nay, nay," he said, roughly. "I have my own motive--my own wrong. No thanks--no thanks!"
And with a quick gesture, half deprecation, half farewell, he was gone.
CHAPTER IV.
Vast, sombre, dimly lighted, splendid with precious marbles and rich in famous altar-pieces, the church of Il Gesu wore that day an aspect of even gloomier grandeur than usual. Before the chapel of Saint Ign.a.z.io, a considerable crowd was a.s.sembled. All were listening devoutly. The dropping of a pin might have been heard among them. There had been no service. There was no music. No perfume of incense lingered on the air.
It was simply a week-day discourse that was in process of delivery, and the preacher was Padre Lorenzo.
As Hugh Girdlestone went up the steps and lifted the heavy leathern portiere, he suddenly remembered how, on that other fatal morning of the thirteenth of February last, he had paused upon those very steps, listening to the chanting and half-disposed to enter. Why had he not followed that impulse? He could not tell. Why need the coincidence startle him now? He could not tell that, either. It was but a coincidence, commonplace and natural enough--and yet it troubled him.
He went in.
The chapel was small and held but few seats, and the crowd spread far out into the body of the church, so that the new comer had to take up his position on the outskirts of the congregation. From this place he could hear, but not see the preacher. Finding it impossible, however, to work his way nearer without disturbing others, he contented himself with listening.
The voice of the preacher was low and clear, and sounded like the voice of a young man; but it rose every now and then to a higher key, and that higher key jarred somewhat harshly upon the ear. The subject of his discourse was death. He held it up to his hearers from every point of view--as a terror; as a reward; as a punishment; as a hope beside which all other hopes were but as the shadows of shadows. He compared the last moments of the just man with those of the sinner. He showed under what circ.u.mstances death was robbed of its sting and the grave of its victory. To the soldier falling on the field, to the martyr consuming at the stake, death was glory; to the sick and the heartbroken it was peace; to the philosopher, infinite knowledge; to the poor, infinite wealth; to all faithful Christians, joy everlasting. Happy, he said, were those who died young, for they had not lived to acc.u.mulate the full burden of human sin; happier still those who died penitent, since for them was reserved the special mercy of Heaven.
"But what," he said--and here his voice rose to a strange pitch of tremulous exaltation--"but what shall we say to this event which is to-day on every man"s tongue? What shall we say to the death of this little child--this little child who but yesterday partook of his first communion in this very church, and whose fate is even now moving all hearts to indignation and pity? Was ever pity so mistaken? Was ever death so happily timed? In the first bloom of his innocence, in the very moment of his solemn reception into the bosom of our holy Church, sinless, consecrated, absolved, he pa.s.sed, pure as an angel, into the presence of his Maker. Had he lived but one day longer, he had been less pure. Had he lived to his full term of years, who shall say with what crimes his soul might not have been blackened? He might have lived to become a heretic, an atheist, a blasphemer. He might have died with all his sins upon his head, an outcast upon earth, and an outcast from heaven! Who then shall dare to pity him? Which among us shall not envy him? Has he not gone from earth to heaven, clothed in a wedding garment, like a guest to the banquet of the saints? Has he not gone with the chaplet on his brow, the ring upon his finger, the perfume of the incense yet clinging to his hair, the wine of Christ yet fresh upon his lips? Silence, then, Oh ye of little faith! Why grieve that another voice is given to the heavenly choir? Why lament that another martyr is added to the n.o.ble army of the Lord? Let us rejoice rather than weep.
Let our requiems be changed for songs of praise and thanksgiving. Shall we pity him that he is beyond the reach of sorrow? Shall we shudder at the fate that has given him to Paradise? Shall we even dare to curse the hand that sent him thither? May not that very hand have been consecrated to the task?--have been guided by the finger of G.o.d?--have been inspired by a strength ... a wisdom ... no murderer; but a priest ... a priest of the tabernacle ... it was the voice of G.o.d ... a voice from Heaven ... saying...." He faltered--became inarticulate--stopped.
A sudden confusion fell upon the congregation; a sudden murmur rose and filled the church. In an instant all were moving, speaking, gesticulating; in an instant Hugh Girdlestone was pushing his way towards the chapel.
And the preacher? Tall, slender, wild-eyed, looking utterly helpless and bewildered, he stood before his hearers, unable, as it seemed, to speak or think. He looked quite young--about twenty-eight, or it might be thirty years, of age--but worn and haggard, as one that had prayed and fasted overmuch. Seeing Hugh Girdlestone push through the crowd and stand suddenly before him, he shrank back like a hunted creature, and began trembling violently.
"At last! at last!" gasped the Englishman. "Confess it, murderer; confess it, before I strike you dead with my own hands!"
The priest put his hand to his head. His lips moved, but no utterance came.
"Do you know who I am?" continued Hugh, in a deep, hoa.r.s.e voice that trembled with hatred. "Do you know who I am? I am the husband of Ethel Girdlestone--that Ethel Girdlestone who used to come to this very church to confess to you--to you, who slew her in her bed as you yesterday slew a little child that loved you. Devil! I remember you now. Why did I not suspect you sooner?"
"Hush!" said a grave voice in his ear. "Does the Signore forget in Whose house we are?"
It was another priest of the order, who had just come upon the scene.
"I forget nothing," replied the Englishman. "Bear witness, all present, that I charge this man with murder!"
The new comer turned to the congregation.
"And bear witness, all present," he added solemnly, with uplifted hand, "that the Padre Lorenzo is responsible for neither his words nor his deeds. He is mad."
And so it was. Young, eloquent, learned, an impa.s.sioned orator, and one of the most brilliant ornaments of his order, the Padre Lorenzo had for more than two years betrayed symptoms of insanity. He had committed some few extravagancies from time to time, and had broken down once or twice in a discourse; but it had never been supposed that his eccentricity had danger in it. Of the murder of Ethel Girdlestone no one had ever for one moment dreamed that he was guilty. With the instinctive cunning of madness he had kept his first secret well. But he could not keep the second. Having ventured on the perilous subject, he betrayed himself.
From that hour he became a raving maniac, and disappeared for ever from the world. By what motive his distempered brain had been moved to the commission of these crimes, and where he had obtained the long slender dagger, scarcely thicker than a needle, with which they were perpetrated, were secrets never discovered; but it was thought by some of those who knew him best that he had slain the child to save his soul from possible sin and send him straight to Heaven. As for Ethel Girdlestone, it was probable that he had murdered her from some similar motive--most likely to preserve her against the danger of perversion by a heretic husband.
Hugh Girdlestone lives, famous and prosperous, learned in the law, and not unlikely, it is said, to attain the woolsack by-and-by. But he lives a solitary life, and the gloom that fell upon his youth overshadows all his prosperity. He will never marry again.
THE FOUR-FIFTEEN EXPRESS.
CHAPTER I.
The events which I am about to relate took place between nine and ten years ago. Sebastopol had fallen in the early Spring; the peace of Paris had been concluded since March; our commercial relations with the Russian empire were but recently renewed; and I, returning home after my first northward journey since the war, was well pleased with the prospect of spending the month of December under the hospitable and thoroughly English roof of my excellent friend Jonathan Jelf, Esquire, of Dumbleton Manor, Clayborough, East Anglia. Travelling in the interests of the well-known firm in which it is my lot to be a junior partner, I had been called upon to visit not only the capitals of Russia and Poland, but had found it also necessary to pa.s.s some weeks among the trading ports of the Baltic; whence it came that the year was already far spent before I again set foot on English soil, and that instead of shooting pheasants with him, as I had hoped, in October, I came to be my friend"s guest during the more genial Christmastide.
My voyage over, and a few days given up to business in Liverpool and London, I hastened down to Clayborough with all the delight of a schoolboy whose holidays are at hand. My way lay by the Great East Anglian line as far as Clayborough station, where I was to be met by one of the Dumbleton carriages and conveyed across the remaining nine miles of country. It was a foggy afternoon, singularly warm for the fourth of December, and I had arranged to leave London by the 4.15 express. The early darkness of Winter had already closed in; the lamps were lighted in the carriages; a clinging damp dimmed the windows, adhered to the door-handles, and pervaded all the atmosphere; while the gas jets at the neighbouring bookstand diffused a luminous haze that only served to make the gloom of the terminus more visible. Having arrived some seven minutes before the starting of the train, and, by the connivance of the guard, taken sole possession of an empty compartment, I lighted my travelling lamp, made myself particularly snug, and settled down to the undisturbed enjoyment of a book and a cigar. Great, therefore, was my disappointment when, at the last moment, a gentleman came hurrying along the platform, glanced into my carriage, opened the locked door with a private key, and stepped in.
It struck me at the first glance that I had seen him before--a tall, spare man, thin-lipped, light-eyed, with an ungraceful stoop in the shoulders, and scant grey hair worn somewhat long upon the collar. He carried a light water-proof coat, an umbrella, and a large brown j.a.panned deed-box, which last he placed under the seat. This done, he felt carefully in his breast-pocket, as if to make certain of the safety of his purse or pocket-book; laid his umbrella in the netting overhead; spread the water-proof across his knees; and exchanged his hat for a travelling cap of some Scotch material. By this time the train was moving out of the station, and into the faint grey of the wintry twilight beyond.
I now recognized my companion. I recognized him from the moment when he removed his hat and uncovered the lofty, furrowed and somewhat narrow brow beneath. I had met him, as I distinctly remembered, some three years before, at the very house for which, in all probability, he was now bound like myself. His name was Dwerrihouse; he was a lawyer by profession; and, if I was not greatly mistaken, was first cousin to the wife of my host. I knew also that he was a man eminently "well to do,"
both as regarded his professional and private means. The Jelfs entertained him with that sort of observant courtesy which falls to the lot of the rich relation; the children made much of him; and the old butler, albeit somewhat surly "to the general," treated him with deference. I thought, observing him by the vague mixture of lamplight and twilight, that Mrs. Jelf"s cousin looked all the worse for the three years" wear and tear which had gone over his head since our last meeting. He was very pale, and had a restless light in his eye that I did not remember to have observed before. The anxious lines, too, about his mouth were deepened, and there was a cavernous hollow look about his cheeks and temples which seemed to speak of sickness or sorrow. He had glanced at me as he came in, but without any gleam of recognition in his face. Now he glanced again, as I fancied, somewhat doubtfully. When he did so for the third or fourth time, I ventured to address him.
"Mr. John Dwerrihouse, I think?"
"That is my name," he replied.
"I had the pleasure of meeting you at Dumbleton about three years ago."
Mr. Dwerrihouse bowed.
"I thought I knew your face," he said. "But your name, I regret to say--"
"Langford--William Langford. I have known Jonathan Jelf since we were boys together at Merchant Taylor"s, and I generally spend a few weeks at Dumbleton in the shooting season. I suppose we are bound for the same destination?"
"Not if you are on your way to the Manor," he replied. "I am travelling upon business--rather troublesome business, too--whilst you, doubtless, have only pleasure in view."
"Just so. I am in the habit of looking forward to this visit as to the brightest three weeks in all the year."
"It is a pleasant house," said Mr. Dwerrihouse.
"The pleasantest I know."