Mrs. Buffle stood in what she called her "back'us," practically superintending a periodical wash. The day was hot, and the steam was hot, and, as Mrs. Buffle rubbed away, she began to think she should never be cool again.
"Missis," shrieked out a young voice from the precincts of the shop, "Ben Tyrrett's wife says will you let her have a gill o' vinegar? Be I to serve it?"
The words came from the small damsel who was had in to help on cleaning and washing days. Mrs. Buffle kept her hands still in the soapsuds, and projected her hot face over the tub to answer.
"Matty, tell Mary Ann Tyrrett as she promised faithful to bring me something off her score this week, but I've not seen the colour of it yet."
"She says as it's to put to his head," called back Matty, alluding to the present demand. "He's bad a-bed, and have fainted right off."
"Serve him right," responded Mrs. Buffle. "You may give her the vinegar, Matty. Tell her as it's a penny farthing. I heered he had been drinking again," she added to herself and the washing tub, "and laid hisself down in the wet road the night afore last, and was found there in the morning."
Later in the day, it happened that William Halliburton was passing through Honey Fair, and met Charlotte East. She stopped him. "Have you heard, sir, that Tyrrett is dying?" she asked.
"Tyrrett dying!" repeated William in amazement. "Who says he is?"
"The doctor says it, I believe, sir. I must say he looks like it. Mary Ann sent for me, and I have been down to see him."
"Why, what can be the matter with him?" asked William. "He was at work the day before yesterday!"
"He was at work, sir, but he could not speak, they tell me, for that illness that has been hanging about him so long, and had settled on his chest. That night, after leaving work, instead of going home and getting a basin of gruel, or something of that sort, he went to the Horned Ram, and drank there till he couldn't keep upright."
"With his chest in that state!"
"And that was not the worst," resumed Charlotte. "It had been a wet day, if you remember, sir, and he somehow strayed into Oxlip Lane, and fell down, and lay there till morning. What with drink, and what with exposure to the wet, his chest grew dangerously inflamed, and now the doctor says he has not many hours to live."
"I am sorry to hear it," cried William. "Is he sensible?"
"Too sensible, sir, in one sense," replied Charlotte. "His remorse is dreadful. He is saying that if he had not misspent his life, he might have died a good man, instead of a bad one."
William passed on, much concerned at the news. His way led him past Ben Tyrrett's lodgings, and he turned in. Mary Ann was sobbing and wailing, in the midst of as many curious and condoling neighbours as the kitchen would contain. All were in full gossip—as might be expected. Mrs. Cross had taken home the three little children, by way of keeping the place quiet; and the sick man was lying in the room above, surrounded by several of his fellow-workmen, who had heard of his critical state.
Some of the women sidled off when William entered, rather ashamed of being caught chattering vehemently. It was remarkable the deference that was paid him, and from no assumption of his own—indeed, the absence of assumption may have partially accounted for it. But, though ever courteous and pleasant with them all, he was a thorough gentleman: and the working classes are keen to distinguish this.
"Why, Mrs. Tyrrett, this is sad news!" he said. "Is your husband so ill?"
"Oh, he must die, he must die, sir!" she answered in a frantic tone. Uncomfortably as they had lived together, the man was still her husband, and there is no doubt she was feeling the present crisis; was shrinking with dread from the future. A widow with three young children, and the workhouse for an asylum! It was the only prospect before her. "He must die, anyways; but he might have lasted a few hours longer, if I could have got what the doctor ordered."
William did not understand.
"It was a blister and some physic, sir," explained one of the women. "The doctor wrote it on a paper, and said it was to be took to the nearest druggist's. But when they got it there, Darwin said he couldn't trust the Tyrretts, and they must send the money if they wanted the things."
"It was not Mr. Parry, then, who was called in?"
"It were a strange doctor, sir, as was fetched. There was Tyrrett's last bout of illness owing for to Parry, and so they didn't like to send for him. As to them druggists, they be some of 'em a cross-grained set, unless you goes with the money in your hand."
William asked to see the prescription. It was produced, and he read its contents—he was as capable of doing so and of understanding it as the best doctor in Helstonleigh. He tore a leaf from his pocket-book, wrote a few words in pencil, folded it with the prescription, and desired one of the women to take it to the chemist's again. He then went up to the sick room.
Tyrrett was lying on a flock mattress, on an ugly brown bedstead, the four posts upright and undraped. A blanket and a checked blue cotton quilt covered him. His breathing was terribly laboured, his face painfully anxious. William approached him, bending his head, to avoid contact with the ceiling.
"I'm a-going, sir," cried the man, in tones as anxious as his face. "I'm a-going at last."
"I hope not," said William. "I hope you will get better. You are to have a blister on your chest, and——"
"No he ain't, sir," interrupted one of the men. "Darwin won't send it."
"Oh yes, he will, if he is properly asked. They have gone again to him. Are you in much pain, Tyrrett?"
"I'm in an agony of pain here, sir," pointing to his chest. "But that ain't nothing to my pain of mind. Oh, Mr. Halliburton, you're good, sir; you haven't nothing to reproach yourself with; can't you do nothing for me? I'm going into the sight of my Maker, and He's angry with me!"
In truth, William knew not what to answer. Tyrrett's voice was as a wail of anguish; his hands were stretched out beseechingly.
"Charlotte East were here just now, and she told me to go to Christ—that He was merciful and forgiving. But how am I to go to Him? If I try, sir, I can't, for there's my past life rising up before me. I have been a bad man: I have never once in all my life tried to please God."
The words echoed through the stillness of the room; echoed with a sound that was terribly awful.Never once to have tried to please God!Throughout a whole life, and throughout all its blessings!
"I have never thought of God," he continued to reiterate. "I have never cared for Him, or tried to please Him, or done the least thing for Him. And now I'm going to face His wrath, and I can't help myself!"
"You may be spared yet," said William; "you may indeed. And your future life must atone for the past."
"I shan't be spared, sir; I feel that the world's all up with me," was the rejoinder. "I'm going fast, and there's nobody to give me a word of comfort! Can'tyou, sir? I'm going away, and God's angry with me!"
William leaned over him. "I can only say as Charlotte East did," he whispered. "Try and find your Saviour. There is mercy with Him at the eleventh hour."
"I have not the time to find Him," breathed forth Tyrrett, in agony. "I might find Him if I had time given me; but I have not got it."
William, shrinking in his youth and inexperience from arguing upon topics so momentous, was not equal to the emergency. Who was? He did what he could; and that was to despatch a message for a clergyman, who answered the summons with speed.
The blister also came, and the medicine that had been prescribed. William went home, hoping all might prove as a healing balm to the sick man.
A fallacious hope. Tyrrett died the following morning. When William went round early on his mission of inquiry, he found him dead. Some of the men, whom he had seen with Tyrrett the previous night, were assembled in the kitchen.
"He is but just gone, sir," they said, "The women be up with him now. They have took his wife round screeching to her mother's. He died with that there blister on his chest."
"Did he die peacefully?" was William's question.
"Awful hard, sir, toward the last; moaning, and calling, and clenching his hands in mortal pain. His sister, she come round—she's a hard one, is that Liza Tyrrett—and she set on at the wife, saying it was her fault that he'd took to go out drinking. That there parson couldn't do nothing with him," concluded the speaker, lowering his voice.
William's breath stood still. "No!"
The man shook his head. "Tyrrett weren't in a frame o' mind for it, sir. He kep' crying out as he had led a bad life, and never thought of God—and them was his last words. It ain't happy, sir, to die like that. It have quite cowed down us as was with him: one gets thinking, sir, what sort of a place it may be, t'other side, where he's gone to."
William lifted his head, a sort of eager hope on his countenance, speaking cheerily. "Could you not let poor Tyrrett's death act as a warning to you?"
There was a dead silence. Five men were present; every one of them leading careless lives. Somehow they did not much like to hear of "warning," although the present moment was one of unusual seriousness.
"Religion is so dreadful dull and gloomy, sir."
"Religion dull and gloomy!" echoed William. "Well, perhaps some people do make a gloomy affair of it; but then I don't think theirs can be the right religion. I do not believe people were sent into the world to be gloomy: time enough for that when troubles come."
"Whatisreligion?" asked one of the men.
"It is a sort of thing that's a great deal better to be felt than talked about," answered William. "I am no parson, and cannot pretend to enlighten you. We might never come to an understanding over it, were we to discuss it all day long. I would rather talk to you of life, and its practical duties."
"Tyrrett said as he had never paid heed to any of his duties. It were his cry over and over again, sir, in the night. He said he had drunk, and swore, and beat his wife, and done just what he oughtn't to ha' done."
"Ay, I fear it was so," replied William. "Poor Tyrrett's existence was divided into three phrases—working, drinking, quarrelling: dissatisfaction attending all. I fear a great many more in Honey Fair could say the same."
The men's consciences were pricking them; some of them began to stand uncomfortably on one leg.Theytippled;theyquarrelled; theyhadbeen known to administer personal correction to their wives on provocation.
"Times upon times I asked Tyrrett to come round of an evening to Robert East's," continued William. "He never did come. But I can tell you this, my men; had he taken to pass his evenings there twelve months ago, when the society—as they call it—was first formed, he might have been a hale man now, instead of lying there, dead."
"Do you mean that he'd have growed religious, sir?"
"I tell you we will put religion out of the discussion: as you don't seem to like the word. Had Tyrrett taken to like rational evenings, instead of public-houses, it would have made a wonderful difference in his mode of thought, and difference in conduct would have followed. Look at his father-in-law, Cross. He was living without hope or aim, at loggerheads with his wife and with the world, and rather given to wishing himself dead. All that's over. Do you think I should like to go about with a dirty face and holes in my coat?"
The men laughed. They thought not.
"Cross used to do so. But you see nothing of that now. Many others used to do so. Many do so still."
Rather conscience-stricken again, the men tried to hide their elbows. "It's true enough," said one. "Cross, and some more of 'em, are getting smart."
"Smart inside as well as out," said William. "They are acquiring self-respect; one of the best qualities a man can find. They wouldn't be seen in the street now in rags, or the worse for drink, or in any other degrading position; no, not if you bribed them with gold. Coming round to East's has done that for them. They are beginning to see that it's just as well to lead pleasant lives here, as unpleasant ones. In a short time, Cross will be getting furniture about him again, towards setting up the home he lost. He—and many more—will also, as I truly believe, be beginning to set up furniture of another sort."
"What sort's that, sir?"
"The furniture that will stand him in need for the next life; the life that Tyrrett has now entered upon," replied William in deeper tones. "It is a life thatmustcome, you know; our little span of time here, in comparison with eternity, is but as a drop of water to the great river that runs through the town; and it is as well to be prepared for it. Now, the next five I am going to get round to East's are you."
"Us, sir?"
"Every one of you; although I believe you have been in the habit of complimenting your friends who go there with the title of 'milksops.' I want to take you there this evening. If you don't like it, you know you need not repeat the visit. You will come, to oblige me, won't you?"
They said they would. And William went out satisfied, though he hardly knew how Robert East would manage to stow away the new comers. Not many steps from the door he encountered Mrs. Buffle. She stopped him to talk of Tyrrett.
"Better that he had spent his loose time at East's than at the publics," remarked that lady.
"It is the very thing we have been saying," answered William. "I wish we could get all Honey Fair there; though, indeed there's no room for more than we have now. I cast a longing eye sometimes to that building at the back, which they say was built for a Mormon stronghold, and has never been fitted up, owing to a dispute among themselves about the number of wives each elder might appropriate to his own share."
"Disgraceful pollagists!" struck in Mrs. Buffle, apostrophizing the Mormon elders. "One husband is enough to have at one's fireside, goodness knows, without being worried with an unlimited number."
"That is not the question," said William, laughing. "It is, how many wives are enough? However, I wish we could get the building. East will have to hold the gathering in his garden soon."
"There's no denying that it have worked good in Honey Fair," acknowledged Mrs. Buffle. "It isn't alone the men that have grown more respectable, them as have took to go, but their wives too. You see, sir, in sitting at the public-houses, it wasn't only that they drank themselves quarrelsome, but they spent their money. Now their tempers are saved, and their money's saved. The wives see the benefit of it, and of course try to be better-behaved theirselves. Not but what there's plenty of room for improvement still," added Mrs. Buffle, in a tone of patronage.
"It will come in time," said William.
"What we must do now, is to look out for a larger room."
"One with a chimbley in it, as'll draw?" suggested Mrs. Buffle.
"Oh yes. What would they do without fire on a winter's night? The great point is, to have things thoroughly comfortable."
"If it hadn't been for the chimbley, I might have offered our big garret, sir. But it's the crankiest thing ever built, is that chimbley; the minute a handful of fire's lighted, the smoke puffs it out again. And then again—there'd be the passing through the shop, obstructing the custom."
"Of course there would," assented William. "We must try for that failure in the rear, after all."
The Pyramids of Egypt grew, in the course of time, into pyramids, as was oracularly remarked by Sergeant Delves; but that official's exertions, labour as hard as he would, grew to nothing—when applied to the cause with which he had compared the pyramids. All inquiry, all searching brought to bear upon it by him and his co-adherents, did not bring anything to light of Herbert Dare's movements on that fatal night. Where he had passed the hours remained an impenetrable mystery; and the sergeant had to confess himself foiled. He came, not unnaturally, to the conclusion that Herbert Dare was not anywhere, so far as the outer world was concerned: that he had been at home, committing the mischief. A conclusion the sergeant had drawn from the very first, and it had never been shaken. Nevertheless, it was his duty to put all the skill and craft of the local police force into action; and very close inquiries were made. Every house of entertainment in the city, of whatever nature—whether a billiard-room or an oyster-shop; whether a chief hotel or an obscure public-house—was visited and keenly questioned; but no one would acknowledge to having seen Herbert Dare on the particular evening. In short, no trace of him could be unearthed.
"Just as much out as I was," said the sergeant to himself. And Helstonleigh held the same conviction.
Pomeranian Knoll was desolate: with a desolation it had never expected to fall upon it. A shattering blow had been struck to Mr. and Mrs. Dare. To lose their eldest son in so terrible a manner, seemed, of itself, sufficient agony for a whole lifetime. Whatever may have been his faults—and Helstonleigh knew that he was somewhat rich in faults—he was dear to them; dearer than her other children to Mrs. Dare. Herbert had remarked, in conversing with Anna Lynn, that Anthony was his mother's favourite. It was so. She had loved him deeply, had been blind to his failings. Neither Mr. Dare nor his wife was amongst the religious of the world. Religious thoughts and reflections, they, in common with many others in Helstonleigh, were content to leave to a remote death-bed. But they had been less than human, worse than heathen, could they be insensible to the fate of Anthony—hurled away with his sins upon his head. He was cut off suddenly from this world, and—what of the next? It was a question, an uncertainty, that they dared not follow; and they sat, one on each side their desolate hearth, and wailed forth their vain anguish.
This would, in truth, have been tribulation enough to have overshadowed a life; but there was more beyond it. Hemmed in by pride, as the Dares had been, playing at being great and grand in Helstonleigh, the situation of Herbert, setting aside their fears or their sympathy for himself, was about the most complete checkmate that could have fallen upon them. It was the cup of humiliation drained to its dregs. Whether he should be proved guilty or not, he was thrown into prison as a common felon, awaiting his trial for murder; and that disgrace could not be wiped out. Did they believe him guilty? They did not know themselves. To suspect him of such a crime was painful in the last degree to their feelings; but why did he persist in refusing to state where he was on the eventful night? There was the point that staggered them.
A deep gloom overhung the house, extending to all its inmates. Even the servants went about with sad faces and quiet steps. The young ladies knew that a calamity had been dealt to them from which they should never wholly recover. Their star of brilliancy, in its little sphere of light at Helstonleigh, had faded into dimness, if not wholly gone down below the horizon. Should Herbert be found guilty, it could never rise again. Adelaide rarely spoke; she appeared to possess some inward source of vexation or grief, apart from the general tribulation. At least, so judged Signora Varsini; and she was a shrewd observer. She, Miss Dare, spent most of her time shut up in her own room. Rosa and Minny were chiefly with their governess. They were getting of an age to feel it in an equal degree with the rest. Rosa was eighteen, and had begun to go out with Mrs. Dare and Adelaide: Minny was anticipating the same privilege. It was all stopped now—visiting, gaiety, pleasure; and it was felt as a part of the misfortune.
The first shock of the occurrence subsided, the funeral over, and the family settled down in its mourning, the governess exacted their studies from her two pupils as before. They were loth to recommence them, and appealed to their mother. "It was cruel of mademoiselle to wish it of them," they said. Mademoiselle rejoined that her motive was anything but cruel: she felt sure that occupation for the mind was the best counteraction to grief. If they would not study, where was the use of her remaining, she demanded. Madame Dare had better allow her to leave. She would go without notice, if madame pleased. She should be glad to get back to the Continent. They did not have murders there in society; at least, she, mademoiselle, had never encountered personal experience of it.
Mrs. Dare did not appear willing to accede to the proposition. The governess was a most efficient instructress; and six or twelve months more of her services would be essential to her pupils, if they were to be turned out as pupils ought to be. Besides, Sergeant Delves had intimated that the signora's testimony would be necessary at the trial, and therefore she could not be allowed to depart. Mr. Dare thought if they did allow her to depart, they might be accused of wishing to suppress evidence, and it might tell against Herbert. So mademoiselle had to resign herself to remaining. "Très bien," she equably said; "she was willing; only the young ladies must resume their lessons." A mandate in which Mrs. Dare acquiesced.
Sometimes Minny, who was given to be incorrigibly idle, would burst into tears over the trouble of her work, and then lay it upon her distress touching the uncertain fate of Herbert. One day, upon doing this, the governess broke out sharply.
"He deserves to lie in prison, does Monsieur Herbert!"
"Why do you say that, mademoiselle?" asked Minny resentfully.
"Because he is a fool," politely returned mademoiselle. "He say, does he not, that he was not home at the time. It is well; but why does he not say where he was? I think he is a fool, me."
"You may as well say outright, mademoiselle, that you think him guilty!" retorted Minny.
"But I not think him guilty," dissented mademoiselle. "I have said from the first that he was not guilty. I think he is not one capable of doing such an injury, to his brother or to any one else. I used to be great friends with Monsieur Herbert once, when I gave him those Italian lessons, and I never saw to make me believe his disposition was a cruel."
In point of fact, the governess, more explicitly than any one else in the house, had unceasingly declared her belief in Herbert's innocence. Truly and sincerely she did not believe him capable of so grievous a crime. He was not of a cruel or revengeful disposition: certainly not one to lie in wait, and attack another savagely and secretly. She had never believed that he was, and would not believe it now. Neither had his family. Sergeant Delves' opinion was, that whoever had attacked Anthonyhadlain in wait for him in the dining room, and had sprung upon him as he entered. It is possible, however, that the same point staggered mademoiselle that staggered the rest—Herbert Dare's refusal to state where he was at the time. Believing, as she did, that he could account for it if he chose, she deemed herself perfectly justified in applying to him the complimentary epithet you have just heard. She expressed true sympathy and regret at the untimely fate of Anthony, lamenting him much and genuinely.
Upon Cyril and George the punishment also fell. With one brother not cold in his grave, and the other thrown into gaol to await his trial for murder, they could not, for shame, pursue their amusements as formerly; and amusements to Cyril and George Dare had become a necessity of daily life. Their friends and companions were growing shy of them—or they fancied it. Conscience is all too suggestive. They fancied people shunned them when they walked along the street: Cyril, even, as he stood in Samuel Lynn's room at the manufactory, thought the men, as they passed in and out, looked askance at him. Very likely it was only imagination. George Dare had set his heart upon a commission; one of the members for the city had made a half-promise to Mr. Dare that he would "see what could be done at the Horse Guards." Failing available interest in that quarter, George was in hope that his father would screw out money to purchase one. But, until Herbert was proved innocent (if that time should ever arrive), the question of his entering the army must remain in abeyance. This state of things altogether did not give pleasure to Cyril and George Dare. But there was no remedy for it, and they had to content themselves with sundry private explosions of temper, by way of relief to their minds.
Yes, the evil fell upon all; upon the parents and upon the children. Of course, the latter suffered nothing in comparison with Mr. and Mrs. Dare. Unhappy days, restless nights, were their portion now: the world seemed to be growing too miserable to live in.
"There must be a fatality upon the boys!" Mr. Dare exclaimed one day, in the bitterness of his spirit, as he paced the room with restless steps, his wife sitting moodily, her elbow on the centre-table, her cheek pressed upon her hand. "Unless there had been a fatality upon them, they never could have turned out as they have."
Mrs. Dare resented the speech. In her unhappy frame of mind, which told terribly upon her temper, it seemed a sort of relief to resent everything. If Mr. Dare spoke against their sons, she stood up for them. "Turned out!" she repeated angrily.
"Let us say, as things have turned out, then, if you will. They appear to be turning out pretty badly, as it seems to me. The boys have had every indulgence in life: they have enjoyed a luxurious home; they have ruined me to supply their extravagances——"
"Ruined you!" again resented Mrs. Dare.
"Ay; ruined. It has all but come to it. And yet, what good has the indulgence or have the advantages brought them? Far better—I begin to see it now—that they had been reared to self-denial; made to work for their daily bread."
"How can you give utterance to such things!" rejoined Mrs. Dare, in a chafed tone.
Mr. Dare stopped in his restless pacing, and confronted his wife. "Are we happy in our sons? Speak the truth."
"How could any one be happy, overwhelmed with a misfortune such as this?"
"Put that aside: what are they without it? Rebellious to us; badly conducted in the sight of the world."
"Who says they are badly conducted?" asked Mrs. Dare, an undercurrent of consciousness whispering that she need not have made the objection. "They may be a little wild; but it is a common failing with those of their age and condition. Their faults are only faults of youth and of uncurbed spirits."
"I wish, then, their spirits had been curbed," was Mr. Dare's reply. "It is useless now to reproach each other," he continued, resuming his walk; "but there must have been something radically wrong in their bringing-up. Anthony, gone: Herbert, perhaps, to follow him by almost a worse death, certainly a more disgraceful one: Cyril——" Mr. Dare stopped abruptly in his catalogue, and went on more generally. "There is no comfort in them for us: there never will be any."
"What can you bring against Cyril?" sharply asked Mrs. Dare. It may be, that these complaints of her husband fretted her temper; chafed, perhaps, her conscience. Certain it was, they rendered her irritable; and Mr. Dare had latterly indulged in them frequently. "If Cyril is a little wild, it is a gentlemanly failing. There's nothing else to urge against him."
"Is theft gentlemanly?"
"Theft!" repeated Mrs. Dare.
"Theft. I have concealed many things from you, Julia, wishing to spare your feelings. But it may be as well now that you should know a little more of what your sons really are. Cyril might have stood where Herbert will stand—at the criminal bar; though for a crime of lesser degree. For all I can tell, he may stand at it still."
Mrs. Dare looked scared. "What has he done?" she asked, her tone growing timid.
"I say that I have kept these things from you. I wish I could have kept them from you always; but it seems to me that exposure is arising in many ways, and it is better that you should be prepared for it, if it must come. I awake now in the morning to apprehension; I am alarmed throughout the day at my own shadow, dreading what unknown fate may not be falling upon them. Herbert in peril of the hangman: Cyril in peril of a forced voyage to the penal settlements."
A sensation of utter fear stole over Mrs. Dare. For the moment, she could not speak. But she rallied her powers to defend Cyril.
"I think Cyril is hardly used, what with one thing and another. He was to have gone on that French journey, and at the last moment was pushed out of it for Halliburton. I felt more vexed at it, almost, than Cyril himself, and I spoke a word of my mind to Mrs. Ashley."
"You did?"
"Yes. I did not speak of it in the light of disappointment to Cyril; the actual fact of not taking the journey; so much as of the vexation he experienced at being supplanted by one whom he—whom we all—consider inferior to himself, William Halliburton. I let Mrs. Ashley know that we regarded it as a most unmerited and uncalled-for slight; and I took care to drop a hint that we believed Halliburton to have been guilty in that cheque affair."
Mr. Dare paused. "What did Mrs. Ashley say?" he presently asked.
"She said very little. I never saw her so frigid. She intimated that Mr. Ashley was a competent judge of his own business——"
"I mean as to the cheque?" interrupted Mr. Dare.
"She was more frigid over that than over the other. She preferred not to discuss it, she answered; who might have stolen it; or who not."
"I can set you right on both points," said Mr. Dare. "Cyril came to me, complaining of being superseded in this French journey, and I complied with his request, that I should go and remonstrate with Mr. Ashley—being a simpleton for my pains. Mr. Ashley informed me that he never had entertained the slightest intention of despatching Cyril, and why Cyril should have taken up the notion, he could not tell. Mr. Ashley went on to say that he did not consider Cyril sufficiently steady to be intrusted abroad alone——"
"Steady!" echoed Mrs. Dare. "What has steadiness to do with executing business? And, as to being alone, Quaker Lynn went over also."
"But at the outset, which was the time I spoke to him, Mr. Ashley's intention was to dispatch only one—Halliburton. He said that Cyril's want of steadiness would always have been a bar to his thinking of him. Shall I go on and enlighten you on the other point—the cheque?" Mr. Dare added, after a pause.
"Y—es," she answered, a nervous dread causing her to speak with hesitation. Had she a foreshadowing of what was coming?
"It was Cyril who took it," said Mr. Dare, dropping his voice to a whisper.
"Cyril!" she gasped.
"Our son, Cyril. No other."
Mrs. Dare took her hand from her cheek, and leaned back in the chair. She was very pale.
"He was traced to White's shop, where he changed the cheque for gold. He had put on Herbert's cloak, the plaid lining outside. When he began to fear detection, he ripped the lining out, and left the cloak in the state it is; now in the possession of the police. Some of the jags and cuts have been sewn up, I suppose by one of the servants: I made no close inquiries. That cloak," he added, with a passing shiver, "might tell queer tales of our sons, if it were able to speak."
"How did you know it was Cyril?" breathed Mrs. Dare.
"From Delves."
"Delves! Doesheknow it?"
"He does. And the man is keeping the secret out of consideration for us. Delves is good-hearted at bottom. Not but that I spoke a friendly word for him when he was made sergeant. It all tells."
"And Mr. Ashley?" she asked.
"There is no doubt that Ashley has some suspicion: the very fact of his not making a stir in it proves that he has. It would not please him that a relative—as Cyril is—should stand his trial for felony."
"How harshly you put it!" exclaimed Mrs. Dare, bursting into tears. "Felony."
"Nay; what else can I call it?"
A pause ensued. Mr. Dare resumed his restless pacing. Mrs. Dare sat with her handkerchief to her face. Presently she looked up.
"They said it was Halliburton's cloak that the person wore who went to change the cheque."
"It was not Halliburton's. It was Herbert's turned inside out. Herbert knew nothing about it, for I questioned him. He had gone out that night, leaving his cloak hanging in his closet. I asked him how it happened that his cloak, on the inside, should resemble Halliburton's, and he said it was a coincidence. I don't believe him. I entertain little doubt that it was so contrived with a view to enacting some mischief. In fact, what with one revelation and another, I live, as I say, in constant dread of new troubles turning up."
Bitter, most bitter were these revelations to Mrs. Dare; bitter had they been to her husband. Too swiftly were the fruits of their children's rearing coming home to them, bringing their recompense. "There must be a fatality upon the boys!" he reiterated. Possibly. But had neither parents nor children done aught to invoke it?
"Since these evils have come upon our house—the fate of Anthony, the uncertainty overhanging Herbert, the certain guilt of Cyril," resumed Mr. Dare: "I have asked myself whether the money we inherited from old Mr. Cooper may not have wrought ill for us, instead of good."
"Have wrought ill?"
"Ay! Brought with it a curse, instead of a blessing."
She made no remark.
"He warned us that if we took Edgar Halliburton's share it would not bring us good. Do you remember how eagerly he spoke it? We did take it," Mr. Dare added, dropping his voice to the lowest whisper. "And I believe it has just acted as a curse upon us."
"You are fanciful!" she cried, her hands shivering, as she raised her handkerchief to her pale face.
"No; there's no fancy in it. We should have done well to attend to the warning of the dying. Heaven is my witness that at the time, such a thought as that of appropriating it ourselves never crossed my mind. We launched out into expense, and the other share became a necessity to us. It is that expense which has ruined our children."
"How can you say it?" she rejoined, lifting her hands in a passionate sort of manner.
"It has been nothing else. Had they been reared more plainly, they would not have acquired those extravagant notions which have proved their bane. Without that inheritance and the style of living we allowed it to entail upon us, the boys must have understood that they would have to earn money before they spent it, and they would have put their shoulders to the wheel. Julia," he continued, halting by her, and stretching forth his troubled face until it nearly touched hers, "it might have been well now, well with them and with us, had our children been obliged to battle with the poverty to which we condemned the Halliburtons."
Mr. Dare had not taken upon himself the legal conduct of his son Herbert's case. It had been intrusted to the care of a solicitor in Helstonleigh, Mr. Winthorne. This gentleman, more forcibly than any one else, urged upon Herbert Dare the necessity of declaring—if he could declare—where he had been on the night of the murder. He clearly foresaw that, if his client persisted in his present silence, there was no chance of any result but the worst.
He could obtain no response. Deaf to him, as he had been to others, Herbert Dare would disclose nothing. In vain Mr. Winthorne pointed to consequences; first, by delicate hints; next, by hints not delicate; then, by speaking out broadly and fully. It is not pleasant to tell your client, in so many words, that he will be hanged and nothing can save him, unless he compels you to it. Herbert Dare so compelled Mr. Winthorne. All in vain. Mr. Winthorne found he might just as well talk to the walls of the cell. Herbert Dare declared, in the most positive manner, that he had been out the whole of the time stated; from half-past eight o'clock, until nearly two; and from this declaration he never swerved.
Mr. Winthorne was perplexed. The prisoner's assertions were so uniformly earnest, bearing so apparently the stamp of truth, that he could not disbelieve him; or rather, sometimes he believed and sometimes he doubted. It is true that Herbert's declarations did wear an air of entire truth; but Mr. Winthorne had been engaged for criminal offenders before, and knew what the assertions of a great many of them were worth. Down deep in his heart he reasoned very much after the manner of Sergeant Delves: "If he had been absent, he'd confess it to save his neck." He said so to Herbert.
Herbert took the matter, on the whole, coolly; he had done so from the beginning. He did not believe that his neck was really in jeopardy. "They'll never find me guilty," was his belief. He could not avoid standing his trial: that was a calamity from which there was no escape: but he steadily refused to look at its results in a sombre light.
"Canyou tell me where you were?" Mr. Winthorne one morning impulsively asked him, when June was drawing to its close.
"I could if I liked," replied Herbert Dare. "I suppose you mean by that, to throw discredit on what I say, Winthorne; but you are wrong. I could point out to you and to all Helstonleigh where I was that night; but I will not do so. I have my reasons, and I will not."
"Then you will fall," said the lawyer. "The very fact of there being no other quarter than yourself on which to cast a shadow of suspicion, will tell against you. You have been bred to the law, and must see these things as plainly as I can put them to you."
"There's the point that puzzles me—who it can have been that did the injury. I'd give half my remaining life to know."
Mr. Winthorne thought that the whole of it, to judge by present appearances, might not be an inconveniently prolonged period; but he did not say so. "What is your objection to speak?" he asked.
"You have put the same question about fifty times, Winthorne, and you'll never get any different answer from the one you have had already—that I don't choose to state it."
"I suppose you were not committing murder in another quarter of the town, were you?"
"I suppose I was not," equably returned Herbert.
"Then, failing that crime, there's no other in the decalogue that I'd not confess to, to save my life. Whether I was robbing a bank, or setting a church on fire, I'd tell it out rather than be hanged by the neck until I was dead."
"Ah, but I was not doing either," said Herbert.
"Then there's the less reason for your persisting in the observance of so much mystery."
"My doing so is my own business," returned Herbert.
"No, it is not your own business," objected Mr. Winthorne. "You assert that you are innocent of the crime with which you are charged——"
"I assert nothing but the truth," interrupted Herbert.
"Good. Then, if you are innocent, and if you can prove your innocence, it is your duty to your family to do it. A man's duties in this life are not owing to himself alone: above all, a son's. He owes allegiance to his father and mother; his consideration for them should be above his consideration for himself. If you can prove your innocence it will be an unpardonable sin not to do it; a sin inflicted on your family."
"I can't help it," replied Herbert in his obstinacy. "I have my reasons for not speaking, and I shall not speak."
"You will surely suffer the penalty," said Mr. Winthorne.
"Then I must suffer it," returned the prisoner.
But it is one thing to talk, and another to act. Many a brave spirit, ready and willing to undergo hanging in theory, would find his heart fail and his bravery altogether die out, were he really required to reduce it to practice.
Herbert Dare was only human. After July had come in and the time for the opening of the assizes might be counted by hours, then his courage began to flinch. He spent a night in tossing from side to side on his pallet (a wide difference between that and his comfortable bed at home), during which a certain ugly apparatus, to be erected for his especial use within the walls of the prison some fine Saturday morning, on which he might figure by no means gracefully, had mentally disturbed his rest.
He arose unrefreshed. The vision of that possible future was not a pleasant one. Herbert remembered once, when he had been a college boy, that the Saturday morning's occasional drama had been enacted for the warning and edification of the town, and of the country people flocking into it for market. The college boys had determined for once in their lives to see the sight—if they could accomplish it. The ceremony was invariably performed at eight o'clock; the exhibition closed at nine; and the boys' difficulty was, how to arrive at the scene in time, considering that it was only at the striking of the latter hour that they were let loose down the steps of the school. They had tried thetimebetween the cloisters and the county prison; and found that by dint of taking the shorter way through the back streets, tearing along at the fleetest pace, and knocking over every obstruction—human, animal, or material—that might unfortunately be in their path, they could do the distance in four minutes. Arriving rather out of wind, it's true: but that was nothing.
Four minutes! they did not see their way. If the curtain descended at nine, sharp, as good be forty minutes after the hour, as four, in point of practical effect. But the Helstonleigh college boys—as you may sometimes have heard remarked before—were not wont to allow difficulties to overmaster them. If there was a possible way of overcoming obstacles, they were sure to find it. Consultations had been anxious. To request the head-master to allow them as a favour to depart five or ten minutes before the usual time, would be worse than useless. It was a question whether he ever would have accorded it; but there was no chance of it onthatmorning. Neither could the whole school be taken summarily with spasms, or croup, or any other excruciating malady necessitating compassion and an early dismissal.
They came to the resolve of applying to the official who had the cathedral clock under his charge: or, as they phrased it, "coming over the clock-man." By dint of coaxing, or bribery, or some other element of persuasion, they got this functionary to promise to put the clock on eight minutes on that particular morning. And it was done. And at eight minutes before nine by the sun, the cathedral clock rang out its nine strokes. But, instead of the master lifting his finger—the signal for the boys to tear forth—the master sat quiet at his desk, and never gave it. He sat until the eight minutes had gone by, when the other churches in the town gave out their hour; he satfour minutes after that: and then he nodded them their dismissal.
The twelve minutes had seemed to the boys like twelve hours. Where the hitch was, they never knew; they never have known to this day; as they would tell you themselves. Whether the master had received an inkling of what was in the wind; or whether, by one of those extraordinary coincidences that sometimes occur in life, he, for that one morning, allowed the hour to slip by unheeded—had not heard it strike—they could not tell. He gave out no explanation, then or afterwards. The clock-man protested that he had been true; had not breathed a hint to any one living of the purposed advancement; and the boys had no reason to disbelieve him.
However it might have been, they could not alter it. It was four minutes past nine when they clatteredpêle-mêledown the school-room steps. Away they tore, full of fallacious hope, out at the cloisters, through the cathedral precincts, along the nearest streets, and arrived within the given four minutes, rather than over it.
Alas, for human expectations! The prison was there, it is true, formidable as usual; but all trace of the morning's jubilee had passed away. Not only had the chief actor been removed, but also that ugly apparatus which Herbert Dare had dreamt of.Thatmight have afforded them some gratification to contemplate, failing the greater sight. The college boys, dumb in the first moment of their disappointment, gave vent to it at length with three dismal groans, the echoes of which might have been heard as far off as the cathedral. Groans not intended for the unhappy mortal, then beyond hearing of that or any other earthly sound; not for the officials of the county prison, all too quick-handed that morning; but given as a compliment to the respected gentleman at that time holding the situation of head-master.
Herbert Dare remembered this: it was rising up in his mind with strange distinctness. He himself had been one of the deputation chosen to "come over" the clock-man; had been the chief persuader of that functionary. Would the college boys hasten down ifhewere to——In spite of his bravery, he broke off the speculation with a shudder; and, calling the turnkey to him, he despatched a message for Mr. Winthorne. Was it the remembrance of his old school-fellows, of whattheywould think of him, that brought about what no other consideration had been able to effect?
As much indulgence as it was possible to allow a prisoner was accorded to Herbert Dare. Indeed, it may be questioned whether any previous prisoner, incarcerated within the walls of the county prison, had ever enjoyed so much. The governor of the prison and Mr. Dare had lived on intimate terms. Mr. Dare and his two elder sons had been familiar, in their legal capacity, with both its civil and criminal prisoners; and the turnkeys had often bowed Herbert in and out of cells, as they now bowed out Mr. Winthorne. Altogether, what with the governor's friendly feeling, and the turnkey's reverential one, Herbert Dare obtained more privileges than the ordinary run of prisoners. The message was at once taken to Mr. Winthorne, and it brought that gentleman back again.
"I have made up my mind to tell," was Herbert's brief salutation when he entered.
"A very sensible resolution," replied the lawyer. Doubts, however, crossed his mind as he spoke, whether the prisoner was not about to set up some plea which had never had place in fact. In like manner to Sergeant Delves, Mr. Winthorne had arrived at the firm belief that there was nothing to tell. "Well?" said he.
"That is, conditionally," resumed Herbert Dare. "It would be of little use my saying I was at such and such a place, unless I could bring forward confirmatory evidence."
"Of course it would not."
"Well; there are witnesses who could give this satisfactory evidence: but the question is, will they be willing to do it?"
"What motive or excuse could they have for refusing?" returned Mr. Winthorne. "When a fellow-creature's life is at stake, surely there is no man so lost to humanity as not to come forward and save it, if it be in his power."
"Circumstances alter cases," was the curt reply of Herbert Dare.
"Was it your doubt, as to whether they would come forward, that caused your hesitation to call on them to do so?" asked Mr. Winthorne, something not pleasant in his tones.
"Not altogether. I foresaw a difficulty in it; I foresee it still. Winthorne, you look at me with a face full of doubt. There is no need for it—as you will find."
"Well, go on," said the lawyer; for Herbert had stopped.
"The thing must be gone about in a very cautious manner; and I don't quite see how it can be done," resumed Herbert slowly. "Winthorne, I think I had better make a confidant of you, and tell you the whole story from beginning to end."
"If I am to do you any good, I must hear it, I expect. A man can't work in the dark."
"Sit down then, and I'll begin. Though, mind—I tell it you in confidence. It's not for Helstonleigh. But you will see the expediency of being silent when you have heard it."
The following Saturday was the day fixed for the opening of the commission at Helstonleigh. It soon came round, and the streets in the afternoon wore their usual holiday appearance. The high sheriff's procession went out to meet the judges, and groups stood about, waiting and watching for its return. Amongst other people blocking up the way, might be observed the portly person of Sergeant Delves. He strolled along, seeming to look at nothing, but his keen eye was everywhere. It suddenly fell upon Mr. Winthorne, who was picking his way through the crowd as fast as he could do so, apparently in a hurry. Hurry or not, Sergeant Delves stopped him, and drew him to a safe spot beyond the reach of curious ears.
"I was looking for you, Mr. Winthorne," said Delves in a confidential tone. "I say—this tale, that Dare will succeed in establishing analibi, is it reliable?"
"Why—who the mischief can have been setting that afloat?" returned the lawyer, in tones of the utmost astonishment, not unmixed with vexation.
"Dare himself was my informant," replied the sergeant. "I was in the prison just now, and saw him in the yard with the turnkey. He called me aside, and told me he was as good as acquitted."
"Then he is an idiot for his pains. He had no right to talk of it, even to you."
"Iam dark," carelessly returned Delves. "I don't wish ill to the Dares, and wouldn't work it to them; as perhaps some of them could tell you," he added significantly. "What about this acquittal that he talks of?"
"There's no doubt he will be acquitted. He will prove analibi."
"Is it a got-upalibi?" asked the plain-speaking sergeant.
"No. And as far as I go, I would not lend myself to getting up anything false," observed the solicitor. "He has said from the first, you know, that he was not near the house at the time, and so it will turn out."
"Has he confessed where he was, after all his standing out?"
"Yes; to me: it will be disclosed at the trial."
"He was after no good, I know," nodded the sergeant oracularly.
Mr. Winthorne raised his eyebrows, and slightly jerked his shoulders. The movement may have meant anything or nothing. He did not reply in words.
Sergeant Delves fell into a reverie. He roused himself from it to take a searching gaze at the lawyer. "Sir," said he, and he could hardly have spoken more earnestly had his life depended on it, "tell me the truth out-and-out. Do you, yourself, from the depths of your own judgment, believe Herbert Dare to have been innocent?"
"Delves, as truly as that you and I now stand here, I honestly believe that he had no more to do with his brother's death than we had."
"Then I'm blest if I don't take up the other scent!" exclaimed Mr. Delves, slapping his thigh. "I did think of it once, but I dropped it again, so sure was I that it was Master Herbert."
"What scent is that?"
"Look here," said the sergeant—"but now it's my turn to warn you to be dark. There was a young woman met Anthony Dare the night of the murder, when he was going down to the Star and Garter. It's a young woman he did not behave genteel to some time back, as the ghost says in the song. She met him that night, and she gave him a bit of her tongue; not much, for he wouldn't stop to listen. But now, Mr. Winthorne, it has crossed my mind many times whether she might not have watched for his going home again, and followed him; followed him right into the dining-room, and done the mischief. I'll lay a guinea it was her!" added the sergeant, arriving at a hasty conclusion. "I shall look up again now."
"Do you mean that young woman in Honey Fair?" asked Mr. Winthorne.
"Just so. Her, and nobody else. The doubt has crossed me; but, as I say, I was so certain it was the brother, that I did not follow it up."
"Could a woman's feeble hand inflict such injuries?" debated the solicitor.
"'Feeble' be hanged!" politely rejoined the sergeant. "Some women have the fists of men; and the strength of 'em, too. You don't know 'em as we do. A desperate woman will do anything. And Anthony Dare, remember, had not his strength in him that night."
Mr. Winthorne shook his head. "That girl has no look of ferocity about her. I should question it being her. Let's see—what is her name?"
"Listen!" returned the sergeant. "When you have had half as much to do with people as I have, you'll have learnt not to go by looks. Her name is Caroline Mason."
At that moment the cathedral bells rang out, announcing the return of the procession, the advent of the judges. As if the sound reminded the lawyer of the speed of time, he hastily went on his way; leaving the sergeant to use his eyes and ears at the expense of the crowd.
"I wonder how the prisoners in the gaol feels?" remarked a woman whom the sergeant recognised as being no other than Mrs. Cross. She had just come out of a warehouse with her supply of work for the ensuing week.
"Ah, poor creatures!" responded another of the group, andthatwas Mrs. Brumm. "I wonder how young Dare likes it!"
"Or how old Dare likes it—if he can hear 'em all the way up at his office. They'll know their fate soon, them two."
In close vicinity to this colloquy was a young woman, drawn against the wall, under shelter of a projecting doorway. Her once good-looking face was haggard, and her clothes were scanty. It was for this reason, perhaps, that she appeared to shun observation. Sergeant Delves, apparently without any other design than that of working his way leisurely through the throng, edged himself up to her.
"Looking out for the show, Miss Mason?"
Caroline turned her spiritless eyes upon him. "I'm waiting till there's a way cleared for me to get through, without pushing against folks and contaminating 'em. What's the show to me, or me to it?"
"At the last assizes, in March, when the judges came in, young Anthony Dare made one in the streets, looking on," resumed the sergeant, chatting affably. "I saw him and spoke to him. And now he is gone where there's no shows to see."
She made no reply.
"The women there," pointing his thumb at the group of talkers hard by, "are saying that Herbert Dare won't like the sound of the college bells.—Hey, me! Look at those young toads of college boys, just let out of school!" broke off the sergeant, as a tribe of some twenty of the king's scholars came fighting and elbowing their way through the throng to the front. "They are just like so many wild colts! Maybe the prisoner, Herbert Dare, is now casting his thoughts back to the time when he made one of the band, and was as free from care as they are. It's not so long ago."
Caroline Mason asked a question somewhat abruptly. "Will he be found guilty, sir, do you think?"
The sergeant turned the tail of his keen eye upon her, and answered the question by asking another. "Do you?"
She shook her head. "I don't think he was guilty."
"You don't?"
"No, I don't. Why should one brother kill another?"
"Very true," coughed the sergeant. "But somebody must have done it. If Herbert Dare did not, who did?"
"Ah! who did? I'd like to know," she passionately added. "He had folks in this town that owed him grudges, had Mr. Anthony Dare."
"If my vision didn't deceive me, I saw you talking to him that very same night," carelessly observed the sergeant.
"Did you see me?" she rejoined, apparently as much at ease as the sergeant himself. "I had to do an errand at that end of the town, and I met him, and told him what he was. I hadn't spoke to him for months and months; for years, I think. I had slipped into doors, down entries, anywhere to avoid him, if I saw him coming; but a feeling came over me to speak to him then. I'm glad I did. I hope the truths I said to him went along with him to enliven him on his journey!"
"Did you see him after that, later in the evening?" resumed the inspector, putting the question sociably, and stretching his neck up to obtain a view of something at a distance.
"No, I didn't," she replied. "But I would, if I had thought it was going to be his last. I'd have bade him remember all his good works where he was going to. I'd almost have went with him, I would, to have heard how he answered for them, up there."
Caroline Mason glanced upwards to indicate the sky, when a loud flourish of trumpets from the advancing heralds sounded close upon them. As they rode up at a foot pace, they dropped their trumpets, and the mounted javelin-men quickly followed, their javelins in rest. A carriage or two; a few more officials; and then advanced the equipage of the high sheriff. Only one of the judges was in it, fully robed: a fine man, with a benign countenance. A grave smile was on it as he spoke to the sheriff, who sat opposite to him, his chaplain by his side.
Sergeant Delves's attention was distracted for an instant, and when he looked round again, Caroline Mason had disappeared. He just caught sight of her in the distance, winding her way through the crowd, her head down.
"Did she do it, or did she not?" cried the sergeant, in soliloquy. "Go on, go on, my lady, for the present; you are about to be a bit looked after."
Howdidthe prisoners feel, and Herbert Dare amongst them, as the joyous sounds, outside, fell upon their ears; the blast of the trumpets, the sweetness of the bells, the stir of life: penetrating within the walls of the city and county prisons? Did they feel that the pomp and show, run after as a holiday sight, was only a cruel advent to them?—that the formidable and fiery vision in the scarlet robe and flowing wig, who sat in the carriage, bending his serene face upon the mob, collected to stare and shout, might prove the pronouncer of their doom?—a doom that should close the portals of this world upon them, and open those of eternity!
Tuesday morning was the day fixed for the trial of Herbert Dare. You might have walked upon the people's heads in the vicinity of the Guildhall, for all the town wished to get in to hear it. Of course only a very small portion of the town, relatively speaking, could have its wish, or succeed in fighting a way to a place. Of the rest, some went back to their homes, disappointed and exploding; and the rest collected outside and blocked up the street. The police had their work cut out that day; whilst the javelin-men, heralding in the judges, experienced great difficulty in keeping clear the passages. The heat in court would be desperate as the day advanced.
Sir William Leader, as senior judge, took his seat in the criminal court. It was he whom you saw in the sheriff's carriage on Saturday. The same benignant face was bent upon the crowded court that had been bent upon the street mob; the same penetrating eye; the same grave, calm bearing. The prisoner was immediately placed at the bar, and all eyes, strange or familiar, were strained to look at him. They saw a tall, handsome young man, looking too gentlemanly to stand in the felon's dock. He was habited in deep mourning. His countenance, usually somewhat conspicuous for its bright complexion, was pale, probably from the moment's emotion, and his white handkerchief was lifted to his mouth as he moved forward; otherwise he was calm. Old Anthony Dale was in court, looking far more agitated than his son. Preliminaries were gone through, and the trial began.
"Prisoner at the bar, how say you? Are you guilty, or not guilty?"
Herbert Dare raised his eyes fearlessly, and pleaded in a firm tone:
"Not Guilty!"
The leading counsel for the prosecution, Serjeant Seeitall, stated the case. His address occupied some time, and he then proceeded to call witnesses. One of the first examined was Betsy Carter. She deposed to the facts of having sat up with the lady's-maid and Joseph, until the return of Mr. and Mrs. Dare and their daughter; to having then gone into the dining-room with a light to look for Mr. Dare's pipe, which she had left there in the morning, when cleaning the room. "In moving forward with the candle, I saw something dark on the ground," continued Betsy, who, when her first timidity had gone off, seemed inclined to be communicative. "At the first glance, I thought it was one of the gentlemen gone to sleep there; but when I stooped down with the light, I saw it was the face of the dead. Awful, it looked!"
"What did you next do?" demanded the examining counsel.
"Screeched out, gentlemen," responded Betsy.
"What else?"
"I went out of the room, screeching to Joseph in the hall, and master came in from outside the front door, where he was waiting, all peaceful and ignorant, for his pipe, little thinking what there was so close to him. I screeched out all the more, gentlemen, when I remembered the quarrel that had took place at dinner that afternoon, and I knew it was nobody but Mr. Herbert that had done the murder."
The witness was sharply told to confine herself to evidence.
"It couldn't be nobody else," retorted Betsy, who, once set going, was a match for any cross-examiner. "There was the cloak to prove it. Mr. Herbert had gone out in the cloak that very night, and the poor dead gentleman was lying on it. Which proves it must have come off in the scuffle between 'em."
The fact of the quarrel, the facts connected with the cloak, as well as all other facts, had been mentioned by the learned Serjeant Seeitall in his opening address. The witness was questioned as to what she knew of the quarrel: but it appeared that she had not been present; consequently could not testify to it. The cloak she could say more about, and spoke of it confidently as Mr. Herbert's.
"How did you know the cloak, found under the dead man, was Mr. Herbert's?" interposed the prisoner's counsel, Mr. Chattaway.
"Because I did," returned the witness.
"I ask you how you knew it?"
"By lots of tokens," she answered. "By the shining black clasp, for one thing, and by the tears and jags in it, for another. Nobody has ever pretended it was not the cloak. I have seen it fifty times hanging up in Mr. Herbert's closet."
"You saw the prisoner going out in it that evening?"
"Yes, I did," she answered. "I was looking out at Miss Adelaide's chamber window, and I saw him come out of the dining-room window, and go off towards the front gates. The gentlemen often went out through the dining-room window, instead of at the hall door."
"The prisoner says he came back immediately, and left his cloak in the dining-room, going out finally without it. Did you see him come back?"
"No, I didn't," replied Betsy.
"How long did you remain at the window?"
"Not long."
"Did you remain long enough for him to cross the lawn to the front entrance gates, and come back again?"
"No, I don't think I did, sir."
"The court will please take note of that answer," said Mr. Chattaway, who was aware that a great deal had been made of the fact of the housemaid's having seen him go out in the cloak. "You left the window then, immediately?"
"Pretty near immediately. I don't think I stayed long enough at it for him to come back from the front gates—if he did come. I have never said I did," she resentfully continued.
"What time was it that you saw him go out?"
"I hadn't took particular notice of the time. It was dusk. I was turning down my beds; and I generally do that a little before nine. The next room I went into was Mr. Anthony's."
"The deceased was in it, was he not?"
"He was in it, stretched full length upon the sofa. He had his head down on the cushion, and his feet up over the arm at the foot, all comfortable and easy, with a cigar in his mouth, and some glasses and things on the table near him. 'What are you come bothering in here for?' he asked. So I begged his pardon; for you see, gentlemen, I didn't know he was there, and I went out again, and met Joseph carrying up a note to him. A little while after that, he went out."
The witness's propensity to degenerate into gossip appeared irrepressible. Several times she was stopped; once by the judge.
"Of how many servants did the household of Mr. Dare consist?" she was asked.
"There were four of us, gentlemen."
"Did you all sit up that night?"
"All but the cook. She went to bed."
"And the family, those who were at home, went to bed?"
"All of them, sir. The governess went early; she was not well; and Miss Rosa and Miss Minny went, and the two young gentlemen went when they came home from playing cricket."
"In point of fact, then, no one was up except you three servants in the kitchen?"
"Nobody, sir."
"And you heard no noise in the house until the return of Mr. and Mrs. Dare?"
"We never heard nothing," responded Betsy. "We were sitting quietly in the kitchen; me and the lady's-maid at work, and Joseph asleep. We never heard any noise at all."
This was the substance of what was asked her. Joseph was next called, and gave his testimony. He deposed to having fastened up the house at eleven o'clock, with the exception of the dining-room window: that was left open in obedience to orders. All other facts within his knowledge he also testified to. The governess, Signorina Varsini, was called, and questioned upon two points: what she had seen and heard of the quarrel, and of the subsequent conduct of Anthony and Herbert to each other in the drawing-room. But her testimony amounted to nothing, and she might as well not have been troubled. She was also asked whether she had heard any noise in the house between eleven o'clock and the return of Mr. and Mrs. Dare. She replied that she did not hear any, for she had been asleep. She went to sleep long before eleven, and did not wake up until aroused by the commotion caused by the finding of the body. The witness was proceeding to favour the court with her own conviction that the prisoner was innocent, but was brought up with a summary notice that that was not evidence, and that, if she knew nothing more, she might withdraw. Upon which, she honoured the bench with an elaborate curtsey, and retired. Not a witness throughout the day gave evidence with more absolute equanimity.
Lord Hawkesley was examined; also Mr. Brittle—the latter coming to Helstonleigh on his subpœna. But to give the testimony of all the witnesses in length, would only be to repeat what has already been related. It will be sufficient to extract a few questions here and there.
"What were the games played in your rooms that evening?" was asked of Mr. Brittle.
"Some played whist; some écarté."
"At which did the deceased play?"
"At whist."
"Was he a loser, or a gainer?"
"A loser; but to a very trifling amount. We were playing half-crown points. He and myself played against Lord Hawkesley and Captain Bellew. We broke up because he, the deceased, was not sufficiently sober to play."
"Was he sober when he joined you?"
"By no means. He appeared to have been drinking rather freely; and he took more in my rooms, which made him worse."
"Why did you accompany him home?"
"He was scarcely in a state to proceed alone: and I felt no objection to a walk. It was a fine night."
"Did he speak, during the evening, of the dispute which had taken place between him and his brother?" interposed the judge.
"He did not, my lord. A slight incident occurred, as we were going to his home, which it may be perhaps as well to mention——"
"You must mention everything which bears upon this unhappy case, sir," interrupted the judge. "You are sworn to tell the whole truth."
"I do not suppose it does bear upon it directly, my lord. Had I attached importance to it, I should have spoken of it before. In passing the turning which leads to the race-course, a man met us, and began to abuse the deceased. The deceased was inclined to stop and return it, but I drew him on."