The Murder at Jex Farm | Page 6

of anything so mercenary and hateful. He went on. "Then you
think, I suppose, that with the cash in hand I could break off with Mary
and make amends for the wrong I have done you? Is that your little
game?" At that moment I almost hated Charles. Tears of mortification
came into my eyes. "Oh, Charles, don't think so meanly of me!"
"Meanly! Why, hang it, it was in my own head, why should it not be in
yours too? You are the cleverest girl I know, for all you are so quiet; of
course you thought of it! So did I, only that cock won't fight, my girl.
Oh no; I consulted a lawyer, and he upset all my little plans. You could
not raise a penny, says he, for Miss Judson might marry, and if she
does and dies, her estate goes to her children, if she has any. Anyhow
you can't touch the reversion till she dies single, or dies childless."

"Then, Charles, there is nothing for me to do but to go out into the wide
world, poor, abandoned and miserable, with all the weight of my sin
and shame on me!" He looked at me a long time with a curious look in
his eyes, frowning. Then he kissed me suddenly on the mouth. "Maud,"
he said, "you love me--really? really? really?" "I love you," I said,
"with all my heart and soul and strength." "And what?" he asked,
"what would you do to gain my--my company for ever...?" I made him
no answer for I did not understand him. I do not understand him now.
Then he said suddenly, "If you look at me like that with those great
brown eyes of yours and kiss me with those lips I would... there is
nothing, by Jove, nothing I would not----" Then without another
reasonable word and with an oath, he broke from me and left the room.
The last entry in Miss Lewsome's diary was on the evening of the
murder, and it was no doubt written at the very moment when the
tragedy was being enacted within a few yards of the farmhouse
windows. This gave her written words a strange impressiveness to me.
The handwriting of this last entry, I noticed, was as firm as it had been
throughout--such a hand as and have expected from what I knew and
had heard of this young lady's character and temperament; a strikingly
beautiful dark-skinned girl she is, quiet and reticent in manner,
impulsive and headstrong, perhaps where her passions led her--the
diary show this only too clearly--but gentle, repressed in all her ways
and speech; a woman, in short, with such powers of fascination as few
men can resist. It is just such a girl as this for whom men commit
untold follies, and just such a girl as would hold an obstinate,
dull-witted, overbearing and vain young fellow as I judge Charles Jex
to be, in the hollow of her hand. These lines that follow are the last in
the diary:--
I have had a long talk with Mary to-day. Charlie has at last spoken to
her about his feelings towards her, and his feelings towards me. He has
told her plainly that he no longer cares for her, but that he will marry
her if she insists upon holding him to his promise. The communication
has come upon her as a shock, she said. She was overwhelmed. She
could give him no answer. She could not believe that I had encouraged
him. did I really love him, she asked me. Did he really love me? Was it

not all a horrible dream? I told her the truth, or as much of it as I
dared without giving away the secret of my shame. I told her he had
made me care for him long before I knew or even guessed there was
anything between him and her. I would go at once. To-morrow I could
take the train to town and never trouble him, or her, or anyone
connected with Jex Farm again. Poor Mary cried--she behaved
beautifully. She said, "Maud, you love him, he loves you. You can make
him happy, I see now that I cannot. His happiness is more to me than
my own. I will go away, and you shall be his wife. I will never marry."
We did not speak for several minutes. I could not at first believe in such
a reversal of misery. Then all the difficulties of the situation flashed
upon me. My poverty; the financial ruin he had to face; the wealth that
would save him. "No," I said, "Mary, it cannot be; you are generous,
and I love you, but it cannot be. I cannot allow you to make this
sacrifice." We