Читать книгу Bessie's Fortune - Mary Jane Holmes - Страница 29

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When the word "murderer!" dropped from Burton Jerrold's lips, his father started as if a bullet had pierced his heart, and the hot blood surged up into his face, as he said:

"Oh, my son, my son, that you should be the first to call me by a name which even Hannah has never spoken, and she has known it all the time. She saw me do the deed; she helped me bury it. Poor Hannah!"

"You!" and Burton turned fiercely upon his sister, who stood like a block of marble and almost as colorless. "You helped. Then you were an accessory to the crime, and never spoke, never told! No wonder your hair turned white before its time!"

"Brother! brother!" Hannah cried, as she threw up her hands in an anguish of entreaty. "You do not know, you cannot guess, or you would never reproach me thus."

"But I do know that you kept silence, and that I, who thought myself so honorable and high, am branded with disgrace, am the son of a—"

"Stay!" and the dying man gathered all his remaining strength for the reproof. "You shall not call me by that name again. You shall not speak thus to your sister, the noblest woman and the most faithful daughter God ever gave to the world. I bound her by a solemn oath not to speak, even had she wished to, which she did not, for I was her father; your father, too, and I know that in some respects you are not worthy to touch the hem of her garment. Say, Mr. Sanford," and he turned to the rector, who had stood looking on, stupefied with what he heard, "did Hannah do wrong, not to bear witness against me?"

"Hannah never does wrong," the rector said, rousing himself, and going a step nearer to her he took her cold, clammy hand between his own, and held it there, while he continued: "Mr. Jerrold, you reproach your sister for her silence, but consider what her speaking would have done for you! If you feel it so keenly when only you and I know of it, what would you have felt had the whole world been made cognizant of the fact? I do not know the circumstances of your father's crime. Probably there was great provocation, and that it was done in self-defense, and if so the gallows would not have been his punishment, though a prison might, and do you think that as the son of a felon you could have stood where you do now in the world's estimation? No; instead of reproaches, which I do not believe spring from a sense of justice, rather thank your sister who has given all the brightness of her life to shield her father from punishment and you from disgrace."

The rector spoke more severely than was his wont, for he felt a contempt for the man whose real character he now understood better than he had before; but his words had a good effect, for Burton saw the truth there was in them, and turning to his sister, who was sobbing piteously he said:

"Forgive me, Hannah, if I seemed unjust. I am so stunned and hurt that I am not myself, and do not know what I say. I am glad you kept silent; to have spoken would have been to ruin me; but why, having kept the secret so long, did you not keep it longer? Why did not father take it with him to his grave? Surely no good can come from wounding and humiliating me so cruelly."

"Perhaps not, my son," the old man answered, feebly. "For you it might have been better if I had never spoken. Possibly it is a morbid fancy, but I felt that I must confess to my minister. My conscience said so, and that I must tell you in order that you may be a comfort and help to Hannah in what she means to do."

"What does she mean to do?" Burton asked, in alarm, and his father replied:

"Make restitution in some way to the friends of the man I killed, if she can find them."

"Oh!" and Burton set his teeth firmly together as he thought what danger there might be in restitution, for that would involve confession, and that meant disgrace to the Jerrold name. "I shall prevent that if I can; it is well, after all, that I should know," he thought; then to his father he said; "Who was the man? Where are his friends? Tell me all now."

"Yes, I will; but, Hannah, look—I thought I heard some one moving in the next room, a few minutes ago," the old man said, and going to the door, Hannah glanced around the empty kitchen which bore no trace of the white-faced boy who not long before, had left it with an aching heart, and who at that moment was kneeling in the snow and asking God to forgive him for his grandfather's sin.

"There is no one there, and Sam is sleeping soundly in the room beyond," she said, as she returned to her father's side, and taking her place by him passed her arm around him and supported and reassured him, while he told the story of that awful night, a story which the author will tell in her own words rather than in those of the dying man, who introduced a great deal of matter irrelevant to the case.