Murder at Mansfield Park - Lynn Shepherd [104]
‘Will you walk with me, Henry? Mr Maddox has been here.’
He looked at her, and then nodded gravely. ‘Of course. But take care how you talk to me. Do not tell me any thing now, which Mr Maddox would not want you to disclose. I would not wish you entangled in my own difficulties any more than is absolutely necessary. I would protect you from that, even if I can do nothing else.’
She sighed. ‘I do believe he spoke to me with the express intent that I should convey every word of it to you. The more I see of him, the more I think this to be the most insidious of all his schemes. He issues information, little by little, here and there, and then sits back to watch how it takes its effect—how we behave, what we do, what we say. It is as if we are all his puppets—mere clockwork toys, or pawns on a chessboard he can manoeuvre at his pleasure.’
‘In that case,’ said Henry, with a gloomy smile, ‘I cannot be afraid of hearing any thing you wish to say. Do not check yourself. Tell me whatever you like.’
It was not long in the telling. The death of Julia Bertram, the suspicions of Maddox, and the news from London, were all told in a very few words. Such was the sympathy between brother and sister, so deep their mutual love and understanding, that she needed only to relate the facts, for him to comprehend all that she had suffered, and all that she now feared.
When she had finished, he drew her arm through his, as they walked, and she could see that he was troubled.
‘I do not know what pains me more, Mary: the grief you are feeling on account of Julia Bertram, or my own shame at having lied to you.’ He flushed. ‘In that respect, if no other, Maddox told you the truth—which is more than I can say on my own account. I did lie about being at Ferrars’s place, but I did so because I did not want to put you in an invidious position, by asking you, in your turn, to conceal where I really was from our sister and the Bertrams. And I lied about the true state of relations between myself and Fanny because—well, because I was ashamed. Embarrassed and ashamed—that is the truth of it. I did not want to admit that a course of action I undertook from motives of sheer mercenary selfishness, and which has injured so many, did nothing but bring misery on her, and humiliation on myself. When all the excitement of the intrigue was over, a few—a very few—days were sufficient to teach me a bitter lesson. I learned to value sweetness of temper, purity of mind, and excellence of principles in a wife, because I knew by then I would never find them in the woman I had married. I had thought such qualities insignificant compared to the far greater misery of pecuniary distress; I had thought the comforts of rank, position, and money would far outweigh the little inconveniences of a bitter and spiteful wife, who would forever be reminding me that I had dragged her down from the exalted sphere of life to which she might have aspired. Barely two days in London proved to her that she might have bought herself a title with a fortune as large as hers, and she never thereafter allowed me to forget it.’
They walked a little further in silence, before he turned to her. ‘Are you cold, Mary? Your hands are shaking.’
‘Our sister will scold,’ she said, attempting a smile. ‘I have, as usual, forgotten to bring my shawl. Please, go on.’
‘There is not much else to tell. You know my character, Mary—you know my faults, as well as I know them myself. In short, I could not trust myself. Indeed, I should defy any man of warm spirits and natural ardour of mind to govern his temper in the face of such incessant and violent recriminations. She had raised her hand to me once; I did not stay to be tempted to pay her back in kind.’
Mary looked at him in horror, only now comprehending the full import of what he was saying, and how it related to what Maddox had told her. ‘She raised her hand to you?’
He nodded. ‘I do not cut a very manly figure, do I?’ he said, with grim irony. ‘A man