Anne Hereford: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

"By no means," hastily replied Sir Harry. "Miss Hereford's future position in life will preclude her feeling the want of it. You informed me the last time I had the honour of speaking to you, that you were Miss Hereford's only relative: as such, allow me to acquaint you with the fact that she is to be my wife."

"I expected it would end in that," was Mr. Edwin Barley's answer. "And I tell you honestly that I would have removed her from here in time to prevent it, had it been in my power. I liked the child; my wife loved her; and I had rather she married any one in the world than a Chandos. It is too late now."

"Quite too late. Although I am a Chandos, I shall hope to make her happy, Mr. Edwin Barley. I will do my best for it."

Hickens went into the hall at that juncture and the colloquy came to a close. Mr. Edwin Barley moved rapidly to the door, which Hickens opened, and went away with a quick step.

"I have no further orders," he said to the policeman, who was standing at an angle watching the back of the house and part of the avenue. "The prisoner has escaped."

"Escaped, sir! It must have been before we came on then. Shall we search for him?"

"No. He is gone where search would not reach him."

Mr. Edwin Barley strode on with the last words. The man, somewhat mystified, stared after him, and then crossed the lawn to give notice to his fellow that their mission to Chandos seemed to be over.

"Le diable n'est pas si noir que l'on dit," runs the idiomatic saying in France. We have it also in English, as the world of course knows; but it sounds better, that is, less wrong, to give it in the former language. We girls at school there said it often; had one of us ventured on the English sentence at Miss Fenton's, that lady's eyes would have grown round with horror.

It might be applied to Mr. Edwin Barley. Looking back dispassionately, bringing reason to bear on the retrospect, I could not trace one single act or word in him that would justify me in having thought him so bad a man. Taking the colouring from my first view of him, when his dark and certainly ugly face peeped out from the avenue at Hallam, frightening me terribly; and from the dreadful events that followed, in which my childish imagination mixed him up as the worst actor, this prejudice had lived and grown in my mind. He had really done nothing to merit it. There was the abstracted will, but it was not proved that he had taken it; probably he had not. I had been too young to realize the terrible blow brought upon him through George Heneage. And, as we got to know later, the vindictive feeling with which he had pursued him all through these years had its rise in self-defence as well as in a desire to inflict punishment. The semi-doubt cast, or to himself seeming to be cast, on Mr. Edwin Barley at the time, in the remarks that he had been the only one to profit, and that largely, by Philip King's death, had rankled in his mind, implanting there a burning anxiety, apart from other considerations, to bring to light the real criminal. For his own part, he had never for a moment doubted that it had been intentional, deliberate, cruel murder. And I have grown to think that the exaggeration he imparted to Philip King's dying words arose unwittingly in the confusion of the moment; that he was not conscious he did so exaggerate. A passive listener hears words more clearly than an actor.