Miss Lucy wasen penitence. She had been guilty of some childish fault that day at Aunt Cornelia’s, which, coming to the knowledge of Mrs. Carlyle, after their return home the young lady was ordered to the nursery for the rest of the day, and to be regaled upon bread and water.
Barbara was in her pleasant dressing-room. There was to be a dinner party at East Lynne that evening, and she had just finished dressing. Very lovely looked she in her dinner dress, with purple and scarlet flowers in her bosom. She glanced at her watch somewhat anxiously, for the gentlemen had not made their appearance. Half-past six! And they were to dine at seven.
Madame Vine tapped at the door. Her errand was to beg grace for Lucy. She had been promised half an hour in the drawing-room, when the ladies entered it from the dessert-table, and was now in agony of grief at the disappointment. Would Mrs. Carlyle pardon her, and allow her to be dressed?
“You are too lenient to the child, madame,” spoke Barbara. “I don’t think you ever would punish her at all. But when she commits faults, they must be corrected.”
“She is very sorry for her fault; she promises not to be rude again. She is crying as if she would cry her heart out.”
“Not for her ill-behavior, but because she’s afraid of missing the drawing-room to-night,” cried Barbara.
“Do, pray, restore her to favor,” pleaded madame.
“I shall see. Just look, Madame Vine! I broke this, a minute or two ago. Is it not a pity?”
Barbara held in her hand a beautiful toilette ornament, set in pure gold. One of the petals had come off.
Madame Vine examined it. “I have some cement upstairs that would join it,” she exclaimed. “I could do it in two minutes. I bought it in France.”
“Oh, I wish you would,” was Barbara’s delighted response. “Do bring it here and join it now. Shall I bribe you?” she added, laughing. “You make this all right, and then you shall bear back grace to Lucy—for I perceive that is what your heart is set upon.”
Madame Vine went, and returned with her cement. Barbara watched her, as she took the pieces in her hand, to see how the one must fit on to the other.
“This has been broken once, as Joyce tells me,” Barbara said. “But it must have been imperceptibly joined, for I have looked in vain for the damage. Mr. Carlyle bought it for his first wife, when they were in London, after their marriage. She broke it subsequently here, at East Lynne. You will never do it, Madame Vine, if your hand shakes like that. What is the matter?”
A great deal was the matter. First, the ominous words had been upon her tongue. “It was here where the stem joins the flower;” but she recollected herself in time. Next came up the past vision of the place and hour when the accident occurred. Her hanging sleeve had swept it off the table. Mr. Carlyle was in the room, and he had soothed her sorrow—her almost childish sorrow with kisses sweet. Ah me! poor thing! I think our hands would have shaken as hers did. The ornament and the kisses were Barbara’s now.
“I ran quickly up the stairs and back again,” was the explanation she offered to Mrs. Carlyle for her shaking hands.
At that moment Mr. Carlyle and their guests were heard to return, and ascend to their respective apartments, Lord Vane’s gleeful voice echoing through the house. Mr. Carlyle came into his wife’s dressing-room, and Madame Vine would have made a precipitate retreat.
“No, no,” said Barbara, “finish it, now you have begun. Mr. Carlyle will be going to his room. Look at the misfortune I have had. Archibald, I have broken this.”
Mr. Carlyle glanced carelessly at the trinket, and at Madame Vine’s white fingers. He crossed to the door of his dressing-room and opened it, then held out his hand in silence for Barbara to approach and drew her in with him. Madame Vine went on with her work.
Presently Barbara returned, and approached the table where stood Madame Vine, while she drew on her gloves. Her eyelashes were wet.
“I could not help shedding a few tears of joy,” exclaimed Barbara, with a pretty blush, perceiving that madame observed the signs. “Mr. Carlyle has been telling me that my brother’s innocence is now all but patent to the world. It came out upon the examination of those two men, Sir Francis and Otway Bethel. Lord Mount Severn was present at the proceedings, and says they have in some way incriminated each other. Papa sat in his place as chairman; I wonder that he liked to do so.”
Lower bent the head of Madame Vine over her employment. “Has anything been proved against them?” she asked, in her usual soft tone, almost a whisper.
“There is not the least doubt of the guilt of Levison, but Otway Bethel’s share in the affair is a puzzle yet,” replied Mrs. Carlyle. “Both are committed for trial. Oh, that man! that man! how his sins come out!” she continued in excitement.
Madame Vine glanced up through her spectacles.
“Would you believe,” continued Barbara, dropping her voice, “that while West Lynne, and I fear ourselves also, gave that miserable Afy credit for having gone away with Richard, she was all the time with Levison? Ball, the lawyer got her to confess to-day. I am unacquainted with the details; Mr. Carlyle would not give them to me. He said the bare fact was quite enough, and considering the associations it involved, would not do to talk of.”
Mr. Carlyle was right.
“Out it seems to come, little by little, one wickedness after another!” resumed Barbara. “I do not like Mr. Carlyle to hear it. No, I don’t. Of course there is no help for it; but he must feel it terribly, as must also Lord Mount Severn. Shewashis wife, you know, and the children are hers; and to think that she—I mean he—must feel itfor her,” went on Barbara after her sudden pause, and there was some hauteur in her tone lest she should be misunderstood. “Mr. Carlyle is one of the very few men, so entirely noble, whom the sort of disgrace reflected from Lady Isabel’s conduct cannot touch.”
The carriage of the first guest. Barbara ran across the room, and rattled at Mr. Carlyle’s door. “Archibald do you hear?”
Back came the laughing answer. “I shan’t keep them long. But they may surely accord a few minutes’ grace to a man who has just been converted into an M. P.”
Barbara descended to the drawing-room, leaving her, that unhappy lady, to the cement and the broken pieces, and to battle as best she could with her bitter heart. Nothing but stabs; nothing but stabs! Was her punishment ever to end? No. The step she had taken in coming back to East Lynne had precluded that.
The guests arrived; all save Mr. and Mrs. Hare. Barbara received a note from her instead. The justice did not feel well enough to join them.
I should think he did not.
A pleasant party it was at East Lynne, and twelve o’clock struck before the carriage of the last guest drove away. It may have been from one to two hours after that, and the house was steeped in moonlight and quietness, everybody being abed and asleep when a loud summons at the hall bell echoed through the stillness.
The first to put her head out the window was Wilson. “Is it fire?” shrieked she, in the most excessive state of terror conceivable. Wilson had a natural dread of fire—some people do possess this dread more than others—and had oftentime aroused the house to a commotion by declaring she smelt it. “Is it fire?” shrieked Wilson.
“Yes!” was shouted at the top of a man’s voice, who stepped from between the entrance pillars to answer.
Wilson waited for no more. Clutching at the baby with one hand—a fine young gentleman now of near twelve months old, promising fair to be as great a source of trouble to Wilson and the nursery as was his brother Archibald, whom he greatly resembled—and at Archie with the other, out she flew to the corridor screeching “Fire! fire! fire!” never ceasing, down tore Wilson with the four children, and burst unceremoniously into the sleeping apartment of Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle. By this time the children, terrified out of their senses, not at Wilson’s cry of alarm, but at the summary propelling downstairs, set up a shrieking, too. Madame Vine, believing that half the house as least was in flames, was the next to appear, throwing on a shawl she had caught up, and then came Joyce.
“Fire! fire! fire!” shouted Wilson; “we are all being burnt up together!”
Poor Mrs. Carlyle, thus wildly aroused from sleep, sprang out of bed and into the corridor in her night-dress. Everybody else was in a night-dress—when folks are flying for dear life, they don’t stop to look for their dress-coats and best blonde caps. Out came Mr. Carlyle, who had hastily assumed his pantaloons.
He cast a rapid glance down to the hall, and saw that the stairs were perfectly free for escape; therefore to hurry was not so violent. Every soul around him was shrieking in concert, making the confusion and din terrific. The bright moonlight streamed in at the corridor windows, but there was no other light; shadowy and indistinct enough looked the white figures.
“Where is the fire?” he exclaimed. “I don’t smell any. Who gave the first alarm?”
The bell answered him. The hall-bell, which rang out ten times louder and longer than before. He opened one of the windows and leaned from it. “Who’s there?” Madame Vine caught up Archie.
“It’s me, sir,” responded a voice, which he at once recognized to be that of one of Mr. Hare’s men-servants. “Master has been took in a fit, sir, and mistress sent me for you and Miss Barbara. You must please make haste, sir, if you want to see him alive.”
Miss Barbara! It was more familiar to Jasper, in a moment of excitement, than the new name.
“You, Jasper! Is the house on fire—this house?”
“Well, I don’t know, sir. I can hear a dreadful deal of screeching in it.”
Mr. Carlyle closed the window. He began to suspect that the danger lay in fear alone. “Who told you there was fire?” he demanded of Wilson.
“That man ringing at the door,” sobbed Wilson. “Thank goodness I have saved the children!”
Mr. Carlyle felt somewhat exasperated at the mistake. His wife was trembling from head to foot, her face of a deadly whiteness, and he knew that she was not in a condition to be alarmed, necessarily or unnecessarily. She clung to him in terror, asking if theycouldescape.
“My darling, be calm! There’s no fire; it’s a stupid mistake. You may all go back to bed and sleep in peace,” he added to the rest, “and the next time that you alarm the house in the night, Wilson, have the goodness to make yourself sure, first of all, that there’s cause for it.”
Barbara, frightened still, bewildered and uncertain, escaped to the window and threw it open. But Mr. Carlyle was nearly as quick as she; he caught her to him with one hand, and drew the window down with the other. To have these tidings told to her abruptly would be worse than all. By this time some of the servants had descended the other staircase with a light, being in various stages of costume, and hastened to open the hall-door. Jasper entered. The man had probably waited to help to put out the “fire.” Barbara caught sight of him ere Mr. Carlyle could prevent it, and grew sick with fear, believing some ill had happened to her mother.
Drawing her inside their chamber, he broke the news to her soothingly and tenderly, making light of it.
She burst into tears. “You are not deceiving me, Archibald? Papa is not dead?”
“Dead!” cheerfully echoed Mr. Carlyle, in the same tone he might have used had Barbara wondered whether the justice was taking a night airing for pleasure in a balloon. “Wilson has indeed frightened you, love. Dress yourself, and we will go and see him.”
At that moment Barbara recollected William. Strange that she should have been the first to do so—before Lady Isabel—before Mr. Carlyle. She ran out again to the corridors, where the boy stood shivering. “He may have caught his death!” she uttered, snatching him up in her arms. “Oh, Wilson! What have you done? His night-gown is damp and cold.”
Unfit as she was for the burden, she bore him to her own bed. Wilson was not at leisure to attend to reproaches just then. She was engaged in a wordy war with Jasper, leaning over the balustrades to carry it on.
“I never told you there was a fire!” indignantly denied Jasper.
“You did. I opened the nursery window and called out ‘Is it fire?’ and you answered ‘Yes.’”
“You called out ‘Is it Jasper?’ What else should I say but ‘Yes,’ to that? Fire? Where was the fire likely to be—in the park?”
“Wilson take the children back to bed,” authoritatively spoke Mr. Carlyle, as he advanced to look down into the hall. “John, are you there? The close carriage, instantly—look sharp. Madame Vine, pray don’t continue to hold that heavy boy; Joyce can’t you relieve madame?”
In crossing back to his room, Mr. Carlyle had brushed past madame, and noticed that she appeared to be shaking, as with the weight of Archibald. In reality she was still alarmed, not understanding yet the cause of the commotion. Joyce, who comprehended it as little, and had stood with her arms round Lucy, advanced to take Archibald, and Mr. Carlyle disappeared. Barbara had taken off her own warm night-gown then, and put it upon William in place of his cold one—had struck a light and was busily dressing herself.
“Just feel his night-gown Archibald! Wilson—”
A shrill cry of awful terror interrupted the words, and Mr. Carlyle made one bound out again. Barbara followed; the least she thought was that Wilson had dropped the baby in the hall.
That was not the catastrophe. Wilson, with the baby and Lucy, had already disappeared up the staircase, and Madame Vine was disappearing. Archibald lay on the soft carpet of the corridor, where madame had stood; for Joyce, in the act of taking him, had let him slip to the ground—let him fall from sheer terror. She held on to the balustrades, her face ghastly, her mouth open, her eyes fixed in horror—altogether an object to look upon. Archie gathered himself on his sturdy legs, and stood staring.
“Why, Joyce! What is the matter withyou?” cried Mr. Carlyle. “You look as if you had seen a spectre.”
“Oh, master!” she wailed, “I have seen one.”
“Are you all going deranged together?” retorted he, wondering what had come to the house. “Seen a spectre, Joyce?”
Joyce fell on her knees, as if unable to support herself, and crossed her shaking hands upon her chest. Had she seen ten spectres she could not have betrayed more dire distress. She was a sensible and faithful servant, one not given to flights of fancy, and Mr. Carlyle gazed at her in very amazement.
“Joyce, what is this?” he asked, bending down and speaking kindly.
“Oh, my dear master! Heaven have mercy upon us all!” was the inexplicable answer.
“Joyce I ask you what is this?”
She made no reply. She rose up shaking; and, taking Archie’s hand, slowly proceeded toward the upper stairs, low moans breaking from her, and the boy’s naked feet pattering on the carpet.
“What can ail her?” whispered Barbara, following Joyce with her eyes. “What did she mean about a spectre?”
“She must have been reading a ghost-book,” said Carlyle. “Wilson’s folly has turned the house topsy-turvy. Make your haste, Barbara.”
Spring waned. Summer came, and would soon be waning, too, for the hot days of July were now in. What had the months brought forth, since the election of Mr. Carlyle in April? Be you very sure they had not been without their events.
Mr. Justice Hare’s illness had turned out to be a stroke of paralysis. People cannot act with unnatural harshness toward a child, and then discover they have been in the wrong, with impunity. Thus it proved with Mr. Justice Hare. He was recovering, but would never again be the man he had been. The fright, when Jasper had gone to tell of his illness at East Lynne, and was mistaken for fire, had done nobody any damage, save William and Joyce. William had caught a cold, which brought increased malady to the lungs; and Joyce seemed to have caughtfear. She went about, more like one in a dream than awake, would be buried in a reverie for an hour at a time, and if suddenly spoken to, would start and shiver.
Mr. Carlyle and his wife departed for London immediately that Mr. Hare was pronounced out of danger; which was in about a week from the time of his seizure. William accompanied them, partly for the benefit of London advice, partly that Mr. Carlyle would not be parted from him. Joyce went, in attendance with some of the servants.
They found London ringing with the news of Sir Francis Levison’s arrest. London could not understand it; and the most wild and improbable tales were in circulation. The season was at its height; the excitement in proportion; it was more than a nine days’ wonder. On the very evening of their arrival a lady, young and beautiful, was shown in to the presence of Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle. She had declined to give her name, but there arose to Mr. Carlyle’s memory, when he looked upon her, one whom he had seen in earlier days as the friend of his first wife—Blanche Challoner. It was not Blanche, however.
The stranger looked keenly at Mr. Carlyle. He was standing with his hat in his hand, on the point of going out. “Will you pardon this intrusion?” she asked. “I have come to you as one human being in need comes to crave help of another. I am Lady Levison.”
Barbara’s face flushed. Mr. Carlyle courteously invited the stranger to a chair, remaining standing himself. She sat for a moment, and then rose, evidently in an excess of agitation.
“Yes, I am Lady Levison, forced to call that man husband. That he has been a wicked man, I have long known; but now I hear he is a criminal. I hear it, I say, but I can get the truth from none. I went to Lord Mount Severn; he declined to give me particulars. I heard that Mr. Carlyle would be in town to-day, and I resolved to come and ask them of him.”
She delivered the sentences in a jerking, abrupt tone, betraying her inward emotion. Mr. Carlyle, looking somewhat unapproachable, made no immediate reply.
“You and I have both been deeply wronged by him, Mr. Carlyle, but I brought my wrong upon myself, you did not. My sister, Blanche, whom he had cruelly treated—and if I speak of it, I only speak of what is known to the world—warned me against him. Mrs. Levison, his grandmother, that ancient lady who must now be bordering upon ninety, she warned me. The night before my wedding day, she came on purpose to tell me that if I married Francis Levison I should rue it for life. There was yet time to retract she said. Yes; there would have been time; but there was nowill. I would not listen to either. I was led away by vanity, by folly, by something worse—the triumphing over my own sister. Poor Blanche! But which has the best of the bargain now, she or I? And I have a child,” she continued, dropping her voice, “a boy who inherits his father’s name. Mr. Carlyle, will theycondemnhim?”
“Nothing, as yet, is positively proved against him,” replied Mr. Carlyle, compassionating the unhappy lady.
“If I could but get a divorce!” she passionately uttered, apparently losing all self-control. “I might have got one, over and over again, since we married, but there would have been theexposeand the scandal. If I could but change my child’s name! Tell me—does any chance of redress remain for me?”
There was none, and Mr. Carlyle did not attempt to speak of any. He offered a few kind words of sympathy, very generally expressed, and then prepared to go out. She moved, and stood in his way.
“You will not leave until you have given me the particulars! I pray you, do not! I came trustingly to you, hoping to know them.”
“I am waited for, to keep an important engagement,” he answered. “And were my time at liberty, I should decline to tell them to you, on my own account, as well as on yours. Lay not discourtesy to my charge, Lady Levison. Were I to speak of the man, even to you, his name would blister my lips.”
“In every word of hate spoken by you I would sympathize; every contemptuous expression of scorn, cast upon him from your heart, I would join in, tenfold.”
Barbara was shocked. “He is your husband, after all,” she took leave to whisper.
“My husband!” broke forth Lady Levison, in agitation, seemingly. “Yes! there’s the wrong. Why did he, knowing what he was, delude me into becoming his wife? You ought to feel for me, Mrs. Carlyle; and you do feel for me, for you are a wife and mother. How dare these base men marry—take to themselves an innocent, inexperienced girl, vowing, before God, to love and honor and cherish her? Were not his other sins impediment enough but he must have crime, also, and woo me! He has done me deep and irredeemable wrong, and has entailed upon his child an inheritance of shame. What had he or I done to deserve it, I ask?”
Barbara felt half frightened at her vehemence; and Barbara might be thankful not to understand it. All her native gentleness, all her reticence of feeling, as a wife and a gentlewoman, had been goaded out of her. The process had been going on for some time, but this last revelation was the crowning point; and Alice, Lady Levison, turned round upon the world in her helpless resentment, as any poor wife, working in a garret, might have done. There are certain wrongs which bring out human nature in the high-born, as well as in the low. “Still he is your husband,” was all Barbara could, with deprecation, again plead.
“He made himself my husband by deceit, and I will throw him off in the face of day,” returned Lady Levison. “There is no moral obligation why I should not. He has worked ill and ruin—ill and ruin upon me and my child, and the world shall never be allowed to think I have borne my share in it. How was it you kept your hands off him, when he reappeared, to brave you, in West Lynne?” she added, in a changed tone, turning to Mr. Carlyle.
“I cannot tell. I was a marvel oftentimes to myself.”
He quitted the room as he spoke, adding a few civil words about her with Mrs. Carlyle. Barbara, not possessing the scruples of her husband, yielded to Lady Levison’s request, and gave her the outline of the dark tale. Its outline only; and generously suppressing Afy’s name beyond the evening of the fatal event. Lady Levison listened without interruption.
“Do you and Mr. Carlyle believe him to have been guilty?”
“Yes; but Mr. Carlyle will not express his opinion to the world. He does not repay wrong with revenge. I have heard him say that if the lifting of his finger would send the man to his punishment, he would tie down his hand rather than lift it.”
“Was his first wife, Isabel Vane, mad?” she presently asked.
“Mad!” echoed Barbara, in surprise.
“When she quitted him for the other. It could have been nothing else than madness. I could understand a woman’s flying fromhimfor love of Mr. Carlyle; but now that I have seen your husband, I cannot understand the reverse side of the picture. I thank you for your courtesy, Mrs. Carlyle.”
And, without another word, Alice Levison quitted the room as abruptly as she had entered it.
Well, the London visit came to an end. It was of little more than three weeks’ duration, for Barbara must be safe at home again. Mr. Carlyle remained for the rest of the season alone, but he varied it with journeys to East Lynne. He had returned home for good now, July, although the session had not quite terminated. There was another baby at East Lynne, a lovely little baby, pretty as Barbara herself had been at a month old. William was fading rapidly. The London physicians had but confirmed the opinion of Dr. Martin, and it was evident to all that the close would not be long protracted.
Somebody else was fading—Lady Isabel. The cross had been too heavy, and she was sinking under its weight. Can you wonder at it?
An intensely hot day it was under the July sun. Afy Hallijohn was sailing up the street in its beams, finer and vainer than ever. She encountered Mr. Carlyle.
“So, Afy, you are really going to be married at last?”
“Jiffin fancies so, sir. I am not sure yet but what I shall change my mind. Jiffin thinks there’s nobody like me. If I could eat gold and silver, he’d provide it; and he’s as fond as fond can be. But then you know, sir, he’s half soft.”
“Soft as to you, perhaps,” laughed Mr. Carlyle. “I consider him a very civil, respectable man, Afy.”
“And then, I never did think to marry a shopkeeper,” grumbled Afy; “I looked a little higher than that. Only fancy, sir, having a husband who wears a white apron tied round him!”
“Terrible!” responded Mr. Carlyle, with a grave face.
“Not but what it will be a tolerable settlement,” rejoined Afy, veering round a point. “He’s having his house done up in style, and I shall keep two good servants, and do nothing myself but dress and subscribe to the library. He makes plenty of money.”
“A very tolerable settlement, I should say,” returned Mr. Carlyle; and Afy’s face fell before the glance of his eye, merry though it was. “Take care you don’t spend all his money for him, Afy.”
“I’ll take care of that,” nodded Afy, significantly. “Sir,” she somewhat abruptly added, “what is it that’s the matter with Joyce?”
“I do not know,” said Mr. Carlyle, becoming serious. “There does appear to be something the matter with her, for she is much changed.”
“I never saw anybody so changed in my life,” exclaimed Afy. “I told her the other day that she was just like one who had got some dreadful secret upon their mind.”
“It is really more like that than anything else,” observed Mr. Carlyle.
“But she is one of the close ones, is Joyce,” continued Afy. “No fear that she’ll give out a clue, if it does not suit her to do so. She told me, in answer, to mind my own business, and not to take absurd fancies in my head. How is the baby, sir, and Mrs. Carlyle?”
“All well. Good day, Afy.”
Spacious courts were the assize courts of Lynneborough; and it was well they were so, otherwise more people had been disappointed, and numbers were, of hearing the noted trial of Sir Francis Levison for the murder of George Hallijohn.
The circumstances attending the case caused it to bear for the public an unparalleled interest. The rank of the accused, and his antecedents, more especially that particular local antecedent touching the Lady Isabel Carlyle; the verdict still out against Richard Hare; the length of time which had elapsed since; the part played in it by Afy; the intense curiosity as to the part taken in it by Otway Bethel; the speculation as to what had been the exact details, and the doubt of a conviction—all contributed to fan the curiosity of the public. People came from far and near to be present—friends of Mr. Carlyle, friends of the Hares, friends of the Challoner family, friends of the prisoner, besides the general public. Colonel Bethel and Mr. Justice Hare had conspicuous seats.
At a few minutes past nine the judge took his place on the bench, but not before a rumor had gone through the court—a rumor that seemed to shake it to its centre, and which people stretched out their necks to hear—Otway Bethel had turned Queen’s evidence, and was to be admitted as a witness for the crown.
Thin, haggard, pale, looked Francis Levison as he was placed in the dock. His incarceration had not in any way contributed to his personal advantages, and there was an ever-recurring expression of dread upon his countenance not pleasant to look upon. He was dressed in black, old Mrs. Levison having died, and his diamond ring shone conspicuous still on his white hand, now whiter than ever. The most eminent counsel were engaged on both sides.
The testimony of the witnesses already given need not be recapitulated. The identification of the prisoner with the man Thorn was fully established—Ebenezer James proved that. Afy proved it, and also that he, Thorn, was at the cottage that night. Sir Peter Levison’s groom was likewise re-examined. But still there wanted other testimony. Afy was made to re-assert that Thorn had to go to the cottage for his hat after leaving her, but that proved nothing, and the conversation, or quarrel overheard by Mr. Dill was now again, put forward. If this was all the evidence, people opined that the case for the prosecution would break down.
“Call Richard Hare” said the counsel for the prosecution.
Those present who knew Mr. Justice Hare, looked up at him, wondering why he did not stir in answer to his name—wondering at the pallid hue which overspread his face. Not he, but another came forward—a fair, placid, gentlemanly young man, with blue eyes, fair hair, and a pleasant countenance. It was Richard Hare the younger. He had assumed his original position in life, so far as attire went, and in that, at least, was a gentleman again. In speech also—with his working dress Richard had thrown off his working manners.
A strange hubbub arose in court. Richard Hare, the exile—the reported dead—the man whose life was in jeopardy! The spectators rose with one accord to get a better view; they stood on tiptoe; they pushed forth their necks; they strained their eyesight: and, amidst all the noisy hum, the groan bursting from the lips of Justice Hare was unnoticed. Whilst order was being called for, and the judge threatened to clear the court, two officers moved themselves quietly up and stood behind the witness. Richard Hare was in custody, though he might know it not. The witness was sworn.
“What is your name?”
“Richard Hare.”
“Son of Mr. Justice Hare, I believe, of the Grove, West Lynne?”
“His only son.”
“The same against whom a verdict of wilful murder is out?” interposed the judge.
“The same, my lord,” replied Richard Hare, who appeared, strange as it may seem, to have cast away all his old fearfulness.
“Then, witness, let me warn you that you are not obliged to answer any question that may tend to criminate yourself.”
“My lord,” answered Richard Hare, with some emotion, “I wish to answer any and every question put to me. I have but one hope, that the full truth of all pertaining to that fatal evening may be made manifest this day.”
“Look round at the prisoner,” said the examining counsel. “Do you know him?”
“I know him now as Sir Francis Levison. Up to April last I believed his name to be Thorn.”
“State what occurred on the evening of the murder, as far as your knowledge goes.”
“I had an appointment that evening with Afy Hallijohn, and went down to their cottage to keep it—”
“A moment,” interrupted the counsel. “Was your visit that evening made in secret?”
“Partially so. My father and mother were displeased, naturally, at my intimacy with Afy Hallijohn; therefore I did not care that they should be cognizant of my visits there. I am ashamed to confess that I told my father a lie over it that very evening. He saw me leave the dinner-table to go out with my gun, and inquired where I was off to. I answered that I was going out with young Beauchamp.”
“When, in point of fact, you were not?”
“No. I took my gun, for I had promised to lend it to Hallijohn while his own was being repaired. When I reached the cottage Afy refused to admit me; she was busy, and could not, she said. I felt sure she had got Thorn with her. She had, more than once before, refused to admit me when I had gone there by her own appointment, and I always found that Thorn’s presence in the cottage was the obstacle.”
“I suppose you and Thorn were jealous of each other?”
“I was jealous of him; I freely admit it. I don’t know whether he was of me.”
“May I inquire what was the nature of your friendship for Miss Afy Hallijohn?”
“I loved her with an honorable love, as I might have done by any young lady in my own station of life. I would not have married her in opposition to my father and mother; but I told Afy that if she was content to wait for me until I was my own master I would then make her my wife.”
“You had no views toward her of a different nature?”
“None; I cared for her too much for that; and I respected her father. Afy’s mother had been a lady, too, although she had married Hallijohn, who was but clerk to Mr. Carlyle. No; I never had a thought of wrong toward Afy—I never could have had.”
“Now relate the occurrences of the evening?”
“Afy would not admit me, and we had a few words over it; but at length I went away, first giving her the gun, and telling her it was loaded. She lodged it against the wall, just inside the door, and I went into the wood and waited, determined to see whether or not Thorn was with her, for she had denied that he was. Locksley saw me there, and asked why I was hiding. I did not answer; but I went further off, quite out of view of the cottage. Some time afterward, less than half an hour, I heard a shot in the direction of the cottage. Somebody was having a late pop at the partridge, I thought. Just then I saw Otway Bethel emerge from the trees, not far from me, and run toward the cottage. My lord,” added Richard Hare, looking at the judge, “that was the shot that killed Hallijohn!”
“Could the shot,” asked the counsel, “have been fired by Otway Bethel?”
“It could not. It was much further off. Bethel disappeared, and in another minute there came some one flying down the path leading from the cottage. It was Thorn, and evidently in a state of intense terror. His face was livid, his eyes staring, and he panted and shook like one in the ague. Past me he tore, on down the path, and I afterwards heard the sound of his horse galloping away; it had been tied in the wood.”
“Did you follow him?”
“No. I wondered what had happened to put him in that state; but I made haste to the cottage, intending to reproach Afy with her duplicity. I leaped up the two steps, and fell over the prostrate body of Hallijohn. He was lying dead within the door. My gun, just discharged, was flung on the floor, its contents in Hallijohn’s side.”
You might have heard a pin drop in court, so intense was the interest.
“There appeared to be no one in the cottage, upstairs or down. I called to Afy, but she did not answer. I caught up the gun, and was running from the cottage when Locksley came out of the wood and looked at me. I grew confused, fearful, and I threw the gun back again and made off.”
“What were your motives for acting in that way?”
“A panic had come over me, and in that moment I must have lost the use of my reason, otherwise I never should have acted as I did. Thoughts, especially of fear, pass through our minds with astonishing swiftness, and I feared lest the crime should be fastened upon me. It was fear made me snatch up my gun, lest it should be found near the body; it was fear made me throw it back again when Locksley appeared in view—a fear you understand, from which all judgment, all reason, had departed. But for my own conduct, the charge never would have been laid to me.”
“Go on.”
“In my flight I came upon Bethel. I knew that if he had gone toward the cottage after the shot was fired, he must have encountered Thorn flying from it. He denied that he had; he said he had only gone along the path for a few paces, and had then plunged into the wood again. I believed him and departed.”
“Departed from West Lynne?”
“That night I did. It was a foolish, fatal step, the result of cowardice. I found the charge was laid to me, and I thought I would absent myself for a day or two, to see how things turned out. Next came the inquest and the verdict against me, and I then left for good.”
“This is the truth, so far as you are cognizant of it?”
“I swear that it is truth, and the whole truth, so far as I am cognizant of it,” replied Richard Hare, with emotion. “I could not assert it more solemnly were I before God.”
He was subjected to a rigid cross-examination, but his testimony was not shaken in the least. Perhaps not one present but was impressed with its truth.
Afy Hallijohn was recalled, and questioned as to Richard’s presence at her father’s house that night. It tallied with the account given by Richard; but it had to be drawn from her.
“Why did you decline to receive Richard Hare into the cottage, after appointing him to come?”
“Because I chose,” returned Afy.
“Tell the jury why you chose.”
“Well, I had got a friend with me—it was Captain Thorn,” she added, feeling that she should only be questioned on this point, so might as well acknowledge it. “I did not admit Richard Hare, for I fancied they might get up a quarrel if they were together.”
“For what purpose did Richard Hare bring down his gun—do you know?”
“It was to lend to my father. My father’s gun had something the matter with it, and was at the smith’s. I had heard him, the previous day, ask Mr. Richard to lend him one of his, and Mr. Richard said he would bring one, as he did.”
“You lodged the gun against the wall—safely?”
“Quite safely.”
“Was it touched by you, after placing it there, or by the prisoner?”
“I did not touch it; neither did he, that I saw. It was that same gun which was afterward found near my father, and had been discharged.”
The next witness called was Otway Bethel. He also held share in the curiosity of the public, but not in equal degree with Afy, still less with Richard Hare. The substance of his testimony was as follows:—
“On the evening that Hallijohn was killed, I was in the Abbey Wood, and I saw Richard Hare come down the path with a gun, as if he had come down from his own home.”
“Did Richard Hare see you?”
“No; he could not see me; I was right in the thicket. He went to the cottage door, and was about to enter, when Afy Hallijohn came hastily out of it, pulling the door to behind her, and holding it in her hand, as if afraid he would go in. Some colloquy ensued, but I was too far off to hear it; and then she took the gun from him and went indoors. Some time after that I saw Richard Hare amid the trees at a distance, farther off the cottage, then, than I was, and apparently watching the path. I was wondering what he was up to, hiding there, when I head a shot fired, close, as it seemed, to the cottage, and—”
“Stop a bit, witness. Could that shot have been fired by Richard Hare?”
“It could not. He was a quarter of a mile, nearly, away from it. I was much nearer the cottage than he.”
“Go on.”
“I could not imagine what that shot meant, or who could have fired it—not that I suspected mischief—and I knew that poachers did not congregate so near Hallijohn’s cottage. I set off to reconnoiter, and as I turned the corner, which brought the house within my view, I saw Captain Thorn, as he was called, come leaping out of it. His face was white with terror, his breath was gone—in short, I never saw any living man betray so much agitation. I caught his arm as he would have passed me. ‘What have you been about?’ I asked. ‘Was it you that fired?’ He—”
“Stay. Why did you suspect him?”
“From his state of excitement—from the terror he was in—that some ill had happened, I felt sure; and so would you, had you seen him as I did. My arresting him increased his agitation; he tried to throw me off, but I am a strong man, and I suppose he thought it best to temporize. ‘Keep dark upon it, Bethel,’ he said, ‘I will make it worth your while. The thing was not premeditated; it was done in the heat of passion. What business had the fellow to abuse me? I have done no harm to the girl.’ As he thus spoke, he took out a pocket book with the hand that was at liberty; I held the other—”
“As the prisoner thus spoke, you mean?”
“The prisoner. He took a bank-note from his pocket book, and thrust it into my hands. It was a note for fifty pounds. ‘What’s done can’t be undone, Bethel,’ he said, ‘and your saying that you saw me here can serve no good turn. Shall it be silence?’ I took the note and answered that it should be silence. I had not the least idea that anybody was killed.”
“What did you suppose had happened, then?”
“I could not suppose; I could not think; it all passed in the haste and confusion of a moment, and no definite idea occurred to me. Thorn flew on down the path, and I stood looking after him. The next was I heard footsteps, and I slipped within the trees. They were those of Richard Hare, who took the path to the cottage. Presently he returned, little less agitated than Thorn had been. I had gone into an open space, then, and he accosted me, asking if I had seen ‘that hound’ fly from the cottage? ‘What hound?’ I asked of him. ‘That fine fellow, that Thorn, who comes after Afy,’ he answered, but I stoutly denied that I had seen any one. Richard Hare continued his way, and I afterward found that Hallijohn was killed.”
“And so you took a bribe to conceal one of the foulest crimes that man ever committed, Mr. Otway Bethel!”
“I took the money, and I am ashamed to confess it. But it was done without reflection. I swear that had I known what crime it was intended to hush up, I never would have touched it. I was hard up for funds, and the amount tempted me. When I discovered what had really happened, and that Richard Hare was accused, I was thunderstruck at my own deed; many a hundred times since have I cursed the money; and the fate of Richard has been as a heavy weight upon my conscience.”
“You might have lifted the weight by confessing.”
“To what end? It was too late. Thorn had disappeared. I never heard of him, or saw him, until he came to West Lynne this last spring, as Sir Francis Levison, to oppose Mr. Carlyle. Richard Hare had also disappeared—had never been seen or heard of, and most people supposed he was dead. To what end then should I confess? Perhaps only to be suspected myself. Besides, I had taken the money upon a certain understanding, and it was only fair that I should keep to it.”
If Richard Hare was subjected to a severe cross-examination, a far more severe one was awaiting Otway Bethel. The judge spoke to him only once, his tone ringing with reproach.
“It appears then, witness, that you have retained within you, all these years, the proofs of Richard Hare’s innocence?”
“I can only acknowledge it with contrition, my lord.”
“What did you know of Thorn in those days?” asked the counsel.
“Nothing, save that he frequented the Abbey Wood, his object being Afy Hallijohn. I had never exchanged a word with him until that night; but I knew his name, Thorn—at least, the one he went by, and by his addressing me as Bethel, it appeared that he knew mine.”
The case for the prosecution closed. An able and ingenious speech was made for the defence, the learned counsel who offered it contending that there was still no proof of Sir Francis having been the guilty man. Neither was there any proof that the catastrophe was not the result of pure accident. A loaded gun, standing against a wall in a small room, was not a safe weapon, and he called upon the jury not rashly to convict in the uncertainty, but to give the prisoner the benefit of the doubt. He should call no witnesses, he observed, not even to character. Character! for Sir Francis Levison! The court burst into a grin; the only sober face in it being that of the judge.
The judge summed up. Certainly not in the prisoner’s favor; but, to use the expression of some amidst the audience, dead against him. Otway Bethel came in for a side shaft or two from his lordship; Richard Hare for sympathy. The jury retired about four o’clock, and the judge quitted the bench.
A very short time they were absent. Scarcely a quarter of an hour. His lordship returned into court, and the prisoner was again placed in the dock. He was the hue of marble, and, in his nervous agitation, kept incessantly throwing back his hair from his forehead—the action already spoken of. Silence was proclaimed.
“How say you, gentlemen of the jury? Guilty, or not guilty?”
“GUILTY.”
It was a silence to be felt; and the prisoner gasped once or twice convulsively.
“But,” said the foreman, “we wish to recommend him to mercy.”
“On what grounds?” inquired the judge.
“Because, my lord, we believe it was not a crime planned by the prisoner beforehand, but arose out of the bad passions of the moment, and was so committed.”
The judge paused, and drew something black from the receptacle of his pocket, buried deep in his robes.
“Prisoner at the bar! Have you anything to urge why sentence of death should not be passed upon you?”
The prisoner clutched the front of the dock. He threw up his head, as if shaking off the dread fear which had oppressed him, and the marble of his face changed to scarlet.
“Only this, my lord. The jury, in giving their reason for recommending me to your lordship’s mercy, have adopted the right view of the case as it actually occurred. The man Hallijohn’s life was taken by me, it will be useless for me to deny, in the face of the evidence given this day, but it was not taken in malice. When I quitted the girl, Afy, and went to the cottage for my hat, I no more contemplated injuring mortal man than I contemplate it at this moment. He was there, the father, and in the dispute that ensued the catastrophe occurred. My lord, it was not wilful murder.”
The prisoner ceased, and the judge, the black cap on his head, crossed his hands one upon the other.
“Prisoner at the bar. You have been convicted by clear and undoubted evidence of the crime of wilful murder. The jury have pronounced you guilty; and in their verdict I entirely coincide. That you took the life of that ill-fated and unoffending man, there is no doubt; you have, yourself, confessed it. It was a foul, a barbarous, a wicked act. I care not for what may have been the particular circumstances attending it; he may have provoked you by words; but no provocation of that nature could justify your drawing the gun upon him. Your counsel urged that you were a gentleman, a member of the British aristocracy, and therefore deserved consideration. I confess that I was much surprised to hear such a doctrine fall from his lips. In my opinion, you being what you are, your position in life makes your crime the worse, and I have always maintained that when a man possessed of advantages falls into sin, he deserves less consideration than does one who is poor, simple, and uneducated. Certain portions of the evidence given to-day (and I do not now allude to the actual crime) tell very greatly against you, and I am sure not one in the court but must have turned from them with abhorrence. You were pursuing the daughter of this man with no honorable purpose—and in this point your conduct contrasts badly with the avowal of Richard Hare, equally a gentleman with yourself. In this pursuit you killed her father; and not content with that, you still pursued the girl—and pursued her to ruin, basely deceiving her as to the actual facts, and laying the crime upon another. I cannot trust myself to speak further upon this point, nor is it necessary that I should; it is not to answer for that, that you stand before me. Uncalled, unprepared, and by you unpitied, you hurried that unfortunate man into eternity, and you must now expiate the crime with your own life. The jury have recommended you to mercy, and the recommendation will be forwarded in due course to the proper quarter, but you must be aware how frequently this clause is appended to a verdict, and how very rarely it is attended to, just cause being wanting. I can but enjoin you, and I do so most earnestly, to pass the little time that probably remains to you on earth in seeking repentance and forgiveness. You are best aware, yourself, what your past life has been; the world knows somewhat of it; but there is pardon above for the most guilty, when it is earnestly sought. It now only remains for me to pass the sentence of the law. It is, that you, Francis Levison, be taken back to the place from whence you came, and thence to the place of execution, and that you be there hanged by the neck until you are dead. And may the Lord God Almighty have mercy on your soul!”
“Amen!”
The court was cleared. The day’s excitement was over, and the next case was inquired for. Not quite over, however, yet, the excitement, and the audience crowded in again. For the next case proved to be the arraignment of Richard Hare the younger. A formal proceeding merely, in pursuance of the verdict of the coroner’s inquest. No evidence was offered against him, and the judge ordered him to be discharged. Richard, poor, ill-used, baited Richard was a free man again.
Then ensued the scene of all scenes. Half, at least, of those present, were residents of, or from near West Lynne. They had known Richard Hare from infancy—they had admired the boy in his pretty childhood—they had liked him in his unoffending boyhood, but they had been none the less ready to cast their harsh stones at him, and to thunder down their denunciations when the time came. In proportion to their fierceness then, was their contrition now; Richard had been innocent all the while; they had been more guilty than he.
An English mob, gentle or simple, never gets up its excitement by halves. Whether its demonstration be of a laudatory or a condemnatory nature, the steam is sure to be put on to bursting point. With one universal shout, with one bound, they rallied round Richard; they congratulated him; they overwhelmed him with good wishes; they expressed with shame their repentance; they said the future would atone for the past. Had he possessed a hundred hands, they would have been shaken off. And when Richard extracted himself, and turned, in his pleasant, forgiving, loving nature, to his father, the stern old justice, forgetting his pride and pomposity, burst into tears and sobbed like a child, as he murmured something about his also needing forgiveness.
“Dear father,” cried Richard, his own eyes wet, “it is forgiven and forgotten already. Think how happy we shall be again together, you, and I, and my mother.”
The justice’s hands, which had been wound around his son, relaxed their hold. They were twitching curiously; the body also began to twitch, and he fell upon the shoulder of Colonel Bethel in a second stroke of paralysis.