Clara Vaughan, Volume 1 (of 3) Page 11

  CHAPTER XI.

  It was indeed high time for me to cherish my mother. Her pain at leavingthe place where she had known her little all of happiness--for herchildhood had been overcast with trouble--her pain was so acute andoverpowering that all my deep impassioned feelings sunk reproved beforeit.

  My guardian now seemed much embittered against me, and anxious for ourdeparture. He came once or twice, in my illness, to ask for and to seeme; and he brought back, unperceived by any one, the weapon for which Iraved. But ere I was quite recovered, he wrote, requesting to see me onbusiness in his study. I could not speak yet without pain, having bittenmy tongue severely.

  "Your mother shall have a home here," he said, "as long as ever shewants one; but as for you, malignant or mad, I will try no more tosoften you. When first I saw you in your early childhood, you flew atme as a murderer. Soon after you ransacked my cupboards and stole myboots, to compare them with some impressions or casts you kept. Yes,you look astonished. I never told you of it, but I knew it for allthat. Of those absurdities I thought little, for I regarded them as thefollies of a mad child, and I pitied you deeply, and even liked you foryour filial devotion. But now I find that you have grown up in the samebelief, and you dare even now to avow it. You know that I have no fearof you."

  "Then why had you got that pistol?"

  I saw that he was vexed and surprised at my having perceived it.

  "In a house like this, where such deeds have been done, I think it rightto be armed. Do you think if I had feared you, or your evidence, Iwould have restored that dagger?"

  "Whose was it?"

  "I told you the other night that I once saw a weapon like it, for whichat first I mistook it, but closer examination convinced me of thedifference."

  "How does it differ?"

  "In this. There was no snake on the handle of the other, though therewas the cross on the blade."

  "And where did you see the other?"

  "Some day I will tell you. It is not right to do so now."

  "Not convenient to you, I suppose you mean."

  "I have also shown you that the lock of hair found in your poor mother'shand is much finer and more silky than mine; and you know that I cannotdraw on my foot a boot so small as the one whose impression you have.But I am ashamed of myself for having stooped to such proofs as these.Dare you to look at me and suppose that I with my own hand could havestabbed my brother, a brother so kind and good to me, and for whose sakealone I have borne so long with you?"

  He tried to look me down. I have met but one whose gaze could mastermine; and he was not that one.

  "So, you doubt me still? Are your things packed?'

  "Yes, and my mother's."

  "Then if your mother is well enough, and will not let you leave her, youhad better go next week."

  "No," I replied, "we will go to-morrow."

  "Wilful to the last. So be it. Take this; you cannot refuse it in dutyto your mother."

  He put in my hand an order for a large sum of money. I threw it into thefire.

  "There have been criminals," I exclaimed, "who have suffered from alife-long fear, lest the widow and orphans, starved through their crime,should compass their dying bed. Though we starve in a garret, we touchno bread of yours."

  "Bravo, Miss Melodrame. You need never starve in the present state ofthe stage."

  "That I don't understand; but this I do. It is perhaps the last time Ishall ever see you living. Whether you did that deed or not is known toGod, and you, and possibly one other. But whether you did it or not, Iknow it is on your soul. Your days are wretched, your nights aretroubled. You shall die as your brother died, but not so prepared fordeath."

  "Good bye, Clara. My lunch is coming up."

  God has much to forgive me, but nothing worse than the dark thought ofthat speech. In my fury at weakness in such a cause, I had daredsometimes to imagine that my mother knew him to be the murderer, butconcealed it for the sake of the family honour!