Beyond These Voices

by M. E. Braddon

"No, no, no. Father, have you forgotten those two lost souls Dante saw, driven through the malignant air; they who had stained the earth with blood? Sorrow and sin had been theirs; but Francesca's lover was not a deliberate seducer, and even in that world of pain the love that linked those two who never could be parted more was no base or selfish passion. No man ever fought a harder battle than I fought for her sake. I loved her when we were boy and girl together, when she was a child, a lovely, innocent child, who gave me her heart in that happy morning of life, who had been shut out from all the affection that makes childhood beautiful, the caresses, the praise of an adoring mother, the love of father, brothers, sisters. She had known nothing better than the tepid kindness of a peevish old woman, and she gave her heart to me in the first joyous days of her life, I taught her what youth and happiness meant; and that spring-time of our lives was never forgotten. Vera was the romance of my boyhood. I carried her image in my heart for all the years in which we were strangers; and when Fate brought us together again our hearts went out to each other, as if the years had never parted us, as if she had been still as unconscious of passion as the child who clambered on my knee and flung her arms round my neck on the rocks at Disbrowe."

"But with a certain difference," said the priest. "She was Mario Provana's wife."

"I did not forget that. I told myself that I need never forget it. She was the centre of a selfish clan, who meant to run her for all she was worth. I knew to what account the Disbrowes would turn a millionaire cousin; and I took upon myself to stand between her and a herd of cold-hearted relations, who only valued her as a counter in the social game. Except Susan Amphlett, who is a fool, and Lady Okehampton, who is not much wiser, there was not one of the crew that had a spark of real regard for her."

"And you thought your affection was pure enough to save her from all the pitfalls of Society."

"I thought that I was strong enough to take a brother's place. I had lived my life; I had been a failure. I had sinned, and paid forfeit for my sin. I thought I had done with passionate feeling; and that I could trust myself as fully as Vera trusted me, in her absolute unconsciousness of danger. I was deceived. The fire still burned in the grey ashes of a wasted life, and the time came when it burst into flame and consumed us."

"You were with her that night when Provana came home unexpectedly?"

"I was with her. No matter how that came about. The die had been cast weeks before, when she and I were at the Okehamptons' river villa. We were alone there as if we had been in a wood, and our secret was told and our promise was exchanged. Nothing was to matter any more in our lives except our love. We were to go to the other side of the world and cruise about in the South Seas till we found an island, as Stevenson did, a paradise of love and peace, to end our days in. The yacht was waiting for us at Plymouth, manned and found for an ocean voyage—almost as fine a vessel as the Gloriana. We were to start by an early train that morning. I wrung a promise from her at Lady Fulham's ball; and we met a few hours earlier than we had intended."

"And he found you together, and you killed him?"

"It was her life or his. We faced each other at the door of his dressing-room. The other door was open and the lights were on. I saw death in his face as he stood for a moment looking into her room, the white, dumb rage that means bloodshed. He gave me only one contemptuous glance as he dashed past me to the desk where his pistol case was ready for him. He had the pistol in his hand and had cocked it in what had seemed an instant, and was on his way to her room while I snatched the second pistol from the case. For me he could bide his time. For her, doom was to be swift. I think I read him right even in those fierce moments. His fury was measured by the love he had given her. His foot was on the threshold when I fired. I could hear her stifled sobs as she lay on the floor, where she had fallen at the sound of his footsteps on the landing, half unconscious, in her agony of shame. She told me afterwards that strange lights were in her eyes, a roar of waters in her ears. She was lying in a world of red light."