A Life for a Life, Volume 3 (of 3)Craik, Dinah Maria Mulock
General
A Life for a Life, Volume 3 (of 3)
Craik, Dinah Maria Mulock
Fiction
My sister also remembers papa's being suddenly called away from home for
a day or two, and, on his return, our being all put into mourning, and
told that it was for brother Harry, whom we must never speak of any
more. And once, when she was saying her geography lesson, and wanted
to go and ask papa some questions about Stonehenge and Salisbury, mamma
stopped her, saying she must take care never to mention these places to
papa, for that poor Harry--she called him so now--had died miserably by
an accident, and been buried at Salisbury.
She died the same year, and soon afterwards we came to Rockmount, living
handsomely upon grandfather's money, and proud that we had already begun
to call ourselves Johnston. Oh, me, what wicked falsehoods poor Harry
told about his "family." Him we never again named; not one of our
neighbours here ever knew that we had a brother.
The first shock over, hour after hour of that long night I sat, trying
by any means to recall him to mind, my father's son, my own flesh and
blood--at least by the half-blood--to pity him, to feel as I ought
concerning his death, and the one who caused it. But do as I would, my
thoughts went back to Max--as they might have done, even had he not been
my own Max--out of deep compassion for one who, not being a premeditated
and hardened criminal, had suffered for twenty years the penalty of this
single crime.
It was such, I knew. I did not attempt to palliate it, or justify him.
Though poor Harry was worthless, and Max is--what he is--that did not
alter the question. I believe, even then, I did not disguise from myself
the truth--that my Max had committed, not a fault, but an actual crime.
But I called him my Max still. It was the only word that saved me, or I
might, as he feared, have "broken my heart."
The whole history of that dreadful night, there is no need I should tell
to any human being; even Max himself will never know it. God knows it,
and that is enough. By my own strength, I never should have kept my life
or reason till the morning.
But it was necessary, and it was better far that I should have gone
through this anguish alone, guided by no outer influence, and sustained
only by that Strength which always comes in seasons like these.
I seem, while stretched on the rack of those long night hours, to have
been led by some supernatural instinct into the utmost depths of human
and divine justice, human and divine love, in search of _the right_.
At last I saw it, clung to it, and have found it my rock of hope ever
since.
When the house below began to stir, I put out my candle, and stood
watching the dawn creep over the grey moorlands, just as on the morning
when we had sat up all night with my father--Max and I. How fond my
father was of him--my poor, poor father!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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