Murder at Mansfield Park полностью

"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 beaten about the face by his own wife — how could I hold my head up in public ever again? I would be laughed out of every club in London, and pilloried for a henpecked husband and emasculated milksop." He laughed, but the sound was hollow, and his smile was forced.

"And so, you left her?" she said, gently.

"To my everlasting shame. She did not leave me, I left her — left her alone in town, where she had no friend but me. My own wife. I only found out that she had gone when I had a letter from Mrs Jellett, asking me for the money owed on our lodgings. She had presumed — why should she not? — that Fanny had followed me to the address in Drury-lane I had confided to her. I knew better. I returned to Portman-square, and began to search for her. That part, at least, is true."

"And Enfield? I still cannot comprehend why you should have chosen to go there."

"It was the only place I could think of where I might hope for a moment’s peace and solitude — some where I might gain a little breathing time, while I prepared myself to face the Bertrams."

He stopped and turned to face her, his face grey with unease. "All I can say is, that it did not seem such an injudicious choice then. But as a consequence I cannot prove I was not here in Mansfield when she arrived. I cannot prove I did not kill her. I cannot even say — with truth — that I did not want to be free of her; that I did not, in some small and shameful part of my heart, want her dead. Maddox has his motive, Mary, and he is gaining on me — he is closing in. If he does not soon find the true perpetrator of this crime, I am a dead man."