Wyllard's Weird: A Novel

by M. E. Braddon

"We crossed the bridge and came into Cornwall; and now there was but the shortest time for me to explain my views as to the girl's future, and to get from her those fatal letters, which told the history of my love for Marie Prévol, my double life as her husband, and which, by the evidence of my own handwriting, identified me with her murderer. I was determined that Léonie should not leave the train with that packet in her possession, but I anticipated no difficulty in getting it from her.

"I told her my views, promised her that I would be to her as a guardian and friend, so long as she should deserve my protection, assured her that the happiness and prosperity of her future life were contingent only on her good conduct. And then I asked her for the packet which Madame Lemarque had told her to deliver to me. But to my astonishment she refused to give it to me. Her grandmother had told her that she was never to part with those letters. She was to keep the packet unopened so long as I was kind to her, so long as she was protected by my care; but if at any time I withdrew my help from her, and she was in difficulty or want, she was then to open the packet and read the letters. Her own good sense would tell her how to act when she had read them. In a word, the letters were to remain in this girl's possession as a sword to hang over my head.

"I tried to make the girl understand the infamy of such a line of conduct—tried to make her see that her grandmother had schooled her in the vilest form of chantage. 'You see me willing to help you freely, generously, for the sake of an old friend,' I said; 'and surely you would not use these letters as a lever to extort money from me.' All my arguments were useless. The discipline of the convent had taught the girl blind and implicit obedience to priests and parents. She would not consider anything except the fact that certain instructions had been given to her by her dying grandmother, and that her duty was to obey those instructions.

"I was patient at the beginning; but the unhappy creature's dogged resistance made my blood boil. Passion got the better of me. I caught her by the shoulder with one hand, while I snatched the packet from her feeble grasp with the other. I was beside myself with rage. While I bent over her, holding her as in a vice, she gave a sudden shriek, a shriek of horrified surprise.

"'The face in the wood,' she cried, 'the murderer! the murderer!'

"My hand relaxed its grip; she broke from me, and dashed open the door of the carriage. 'I will tell people what you are!' she gasped, breathless with fury. 'You shall not escape. Yes, I remember your face now—the face I saw in my dreams—the savage face in the wood.'

"She was on the footboard, clinging to the iron by the window, muttering to herself like a mad thing. God alone knows what she meant to do. She wanted to make my crime known, to bring the train to a standstill, to have me arrested then and there. While she stood wavering on that narrow ledge, her life hanging by a thread, the train rounded the curve and passed on to the viaduct. The stony gorge was below, deep and narrow, like an open grave—tempting me—tempting me as Satan tempts his own. One sudden movement of my arm, and all was over. I had held her, for the first few moments. I had tried to save her. Had she been reasonable, I would have saved her. But there was no middle course. Ruin, unutterable ruin for me, or death for her. One motion of my arm, and she was gone. Light as a feather, the frail little figure fluttered down the gorge. Another minute, and the train stopped. I had my railway-key ready before the stoppage, and did not lose an instant in getting along the off-side of the line back to the compartment I had left. Every head without exception was turned towards the side on which the girl had fallen. The only witness of my crime had been destroyed, and my letters were safe in my own keeping, to be burned at the earliest opportunity."

"You burned them that night," said Dora. "I remember. And that tress of hair which you were looking at when I went into the library—"

"Was cut from Marie's head after death. The mother had placed it amongst those fatal letters. That night, after an interval of years, I touched the soft bright hair on which my hand had so often lingered in adoring love—that lovely hair which my hand had stained with blood."

There was no more to be told. An awful silence followed, a silence in which even Dora's sobs no longer sounded. There was a tearless agony which was deeper than that passion of tears.