"The same thought has occurred to me," his wife replied. "I am growing nervous and low-spirited with these horrible images constantly before my mind. I have begged mamma not to mention the subject again at the table, nor anywhere else without necessity. Some people—I don't mean mamma, of course—but some people seem to enjoy tragedies, and to be quite angry if one doesn't put the most terrible construction on every circumstance. I have no patience with them."
She looked, indeed, quite pale and irritated. Like all persons of a lively imagination, she was nearly as much affected by the description of a scene as she would have been on witnessing it; and the frequent repetitions and amplifications with which others of duller natures had found it necessary to revive their own impressions had been both painful and annoying to her. Besides, she had a source of disquiet which she confided to no one, not even to F. Chevreuse, since she never alluded to his mother's death when in conversation with him. While wondering, in spite of herself, what proof sufficient to justify an indictment could have been found against Mr. Schöninger, she had recollected the shawl he left in her garden the night Mother Chevreuse was killed. It did not seem an important circumstance; yet it constantly recurred to her in connection with other points not so trivial. She did not for a moment believe him guilty; but her imagination, seizing on this one fact, held it up suggestively, so that it cast on her mind various and troublesome shadows that were out of all proportion to itself. Why had he appeared startled when she mentioned the shawl to him? And could it be possible he was sincere in saying that he came for it in the morning, when she had plainly seen some one remove it at night? She combated these disagreeable thoughts with all her strength, and sought to atone to Mr. Schöninger for the wrong she believed they did him by entering heartily into all her mother's plans for his comfort; but she could not banish them so entirely but they tormented her into wishing to fly to some place where she might at least hope to forget the whole subject.
"If every one were like Mrs. Gerald and Honora," she said to her mother, "how much smoother and deeper life would be! I am sure they think of dear Mother Chevreuse very often, and always with bleeding hearts; yet they never speak of her, except, in a pleasant way, to recall some saying or some kind act of hers; and one would not know, from what they say, that she had not been assumed bodily into heaven, or, at least, died tranquilly and beautifully of old age. I have no sympathy, mamma, with these noisy people who come here wringing their hands and uttering maledictions on Mr. Schöninger."
Mrs. Ferrier felt a little touched at that part of the speech which referred to the wringing of hands, for that was her most frequent manner of expressing distress of mind, and she was not sure that her daughter did not mean to give her an indirect reproof or warning. Her reply, therefore, was a dissenting one; and the comparison she used, though not elegant, was somewhat strong.
"It's all the same difference as there is between a wild horse and a horse that's broke," she said. "And you can't deny that the creature loses half its spirit before it bears the bit and the rein. And so I believe that your fine, quiet people kill some of the life out of their grief when they teach it to be so polite, and that they forget the friend they have lost while they are thinking how they shall behave themselves and cry in a genteel manner. When I die, Annette, may the Lord give me just such mourners as Mother Chevreuse has in those poor people!"
"Oh! don't, mamma!" the daughter said coaxingly; for Mrs. Ferrier had ended by bursting into tears. "I didn't mean to vex you, only I am nervous and distressed by all this excitement. There! don't cry any more, and I will own that you are at least half right."
"Not but that they do provoke me when they talk about Mr. Schöninger," Mrs. Ferrier admitted, wiping her eyes. "But then, the poor things! it's a relief to their sorrow to be mad with somebody about it."
It was undeniable that whatever relief could be found in lamentation for their dear lost friend, and in invoking retribution on her destroyer, very few hesitated to avail themselves of. Besides what the law could do, it needed all the influence that F. Chevreuse had, both with his own flock and with non-Catholics, to prevent the people who were constantly gathering outside the jail from throwing missiles into Mr. Schöninger's cell.
"How strong is accusation!" he exclaimed. "People appear to think that man condemned already, though he is sure to be triumphantly acquitted. It is astonishing how entirely a grave charge, no matter how unproved, removes those we have loved and respected beyond the pale of our sympathy. It is as though we had never heard of innocence being accused, and believed it impossible that we could ever be calumniated ourselves."
He was speaking to Mr. Sales, the editor of The Aurora, who received his remarks rather uneasily. The Aurora had of late been interesting itself very much in the history of the Jews, both ancient and modern, the items it scattered through its columns with apparent carelessness not being always calculated to inspire the reader with an increased affection for that ancient race; and "Fleur de Lis" had every week, from her corner on the first page, bewailed in facile and dolorous lines the sorrows and sufferings of that Mother and Son to whom, in the prose of everyday life, she was far from conspicuous for devotion.