Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/576

568 I knew that his path was one of unsafety wherever he was known.

“That I am a robber, a betrayer of my master’s trust, a dupe to incredible folly, I do not deny. That I am innocent of any intention to murder him; that he was alive, and, to all appearances, in his usual health when I left him, I affirm on my most sacred oath.

“This is the truth, and nothing but the truth.

“”

circumstances blackened, almost beyond hope of whitening, the mass of evidence against Norah Martyn.

First and chiefly:—she was the last person seen to enter the room of Paul Jansiewich, between the hours of one and four on the day of the murder.

Secondly:—she was known to be in the old man’s confidence, and to have so far an interest in his death, that in the event of it, she was nominated guardian to the young girl, Alexandrina, at a high fixed salary, double the sum she had hitherto been receiving. Norah Martyn denied any knowledge of this, but thus ran the will, and to a woman who had sworn herself the accomplice of a gambler, a thief, a swindler, what credence, removed from the evidence of facts, could be given?

The following facts were all that as yet threw any light on the subject. Immediately after dining with his grand-daughter and her governess in the common dining-room, Paul Jansiewich had retired to his sanctum, which was built beyond the apartment he had just quitted, and had no other communication whatever with the house. Dinner being over by one o’clock, it was between one and two that Norah Martyn carried him a cup of coffee, as was her usual habit, returned with the empty cup, read English to her pupils for about twenty minutes, then started up looking a little agitated, saying that she had an important question to ask M. Jansiewich before going out. She said this to Sasha in the hearing of their servant, who also saw her issue from the dining-room leading out of M. Jansiewich’s apartment a few minutes later. No noise was heard. The two ladies soon after put on their bonnets and went out; it was owing to their absence at four o’clock, that the hausfrau sent a servant with coffee and bread to M. Jansiewich, it being customary in the house to take a light meal between dinner and supper.

What was the girl’s horror to find the old man lying dead upon the floor, apparently killed by a heavy blow on the head? No weapon was found, and the room bore no sign of any struggle.

On whom else but Norah Martyn, could possible suspicions rest? No doubt, the flight of Sasha and M. Talobre formed another mysterious adjunct to this strange story; but with regard to the murder, the two could only be required as witnesses. It was proved by the servant’s testimony, and also by that of her governess, that Sasha could not have seen M. Jansiewich since the dinner-hour. As to M. Talobre, he had not been seen on the premises of Herr Popp’s institution since the day of his last lesson, which happened on the Saturday previous to the murder, and he had been seen in Stuttgart by several people on the fatal day. This testimony, it will be observed, exactly tallied with his unhappy wife’s confession.

How the French master had found opportunity to woo and win the young Russian heiress, was no little matter of conjecture and gossip, till a paper was accidentally found among her copy-books, which showed that he had made artful use of his scholastic privileges to that effect. The paper, a piece of foolscap, and to all appearances an ordinary school exercise, was closely written with the warmest and wildest declarations of love, the most romantic sketches of a life blessed with the fervency of poetic passion; in fine, all that was calculated to captivate the heart and brain of a young girl.

Where were they, these ill-suited, unprincipled, to all others such unloving, lovers? Was their honey-moon an agreeable one, or did the asphodel of their own hearts spoil the sweetness of it a little? Did the dark shadow of that woman’s avenging, awful soul blot out the sun from their hiding place? I think it must have done. Alexandrina was hardly tender-hearted and womanly enough to be happy any how, and for him, the very name of happiness was a jest too poor to laugh at. Yet he had romance in him still. There is no doubt that he loved her after his own fashion, for she was fresh and fair, and no man with that hushed, deep-sinking voice of his, and that winning smile, could ever lose a certain unrespecting admiration of women.

Meantime, did he know that one woman who loved him, as only those women can love, whose natures are capable of high things,—did he know that she was in prison, alone, and, before the face of man, a condemned murderess?

I think words would fail utterly to describe that loneliness, that desolation, that sense of womanly shame. Night and day she prayed with tears that drained her heart like drops of blood, for death. Sometimes she almost hoped that her prayers would be answered, for sleep, appetite, voice failed her: she could not raise her head from her hard pallet; she had hardly strength remaining to mourn aloud in her most despairing moments. The woman in attendance upon her, though utterly coarse, rough, and unmannerly, was kind and pitying. This was the only drop of healing in her bitter, bitter cup. One morning, our old friend the Polizeibeamte, with the glass bead eyes, was ushered into her room.

“I have come with strange news for you,” he said, but for the first time since their acquaintance his eyes looked dull, and were turned away from her.

“You are acquitted—you are proved innocent,” he added.

She made no sign of release. No tears came to the poor eyes that had wept too much in grief, ever to weep again for joy.

“A most extraordinary turn has been given to affairs,” here his eyes grew into beads again, as he ferreted out the secret of his story, “a most unprecedented affair, truly. You are, of course,