Part 16 (2/2)

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.”

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