CHAPTER X.
Frederick was still bending over the dead body of his wife, when Philip Walcheren entered the little back parlour of the ‘Bottle and Spurs’ that evening. The landlady told him that he had not left the room since the preceding night.
‘Nor has bit nor sup passed his lips, sir, except a cup of coffee, which I made expressly, and took to him this morning. Nor haven’t his clothes been off, neither! I’m sure I don’t know whatisto become of the poor gentleman at this rate. He seems just eat up with grief.’
‘I will go to him,’ said Philip, as he turned the handle of the door and entered his cousin’s presence.
Frederick was much in the same positionhe had at first assumed. He occupied a chair by the side of the table on which the body of poor Jenny lay—his hand clasped hers, and his head was bowed down on the deal boards.
‘Frederick—my dear Frederick,’ said Philip, gently.
At the sound of his voice the bereaved husband roused himself, and made a slight deprecatory gesture with his hand.
‘Don’t speak to me—don’t reproach me,’ he answered, bitterly, ‘for I cannot bear it.’
‘Far be it from me to reproach you, Frederick,’ replied his cousin as he laid his hand on his; ‘on the contrary, I have come to comfort you, as far as lies in my power, under the terrible calamity that has befallen you.’
‘No one can comfort me, Philip.’
‘No one but our Heavenly Father, Frederick, and our Blessed Mother, who is watching your sufferings even now, with eyes of divine compassion and love.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ said the other, brusquely; ‘if she pitied me why didn’t she prevent it? She could stand by and see the whole of my life ruined at a blow. What pity is there in that? What good can her pity do me after my love has been taken from me? Look at her, Philip,’ he continued, uncovering the pretty, bruised face of the dead, over which the livid hues of decomposition were already beginning to steal. ‘See how lovely she was! How young! how innocent! And she loved me—she loved me! And now it is all over; we are torn asunder for evermore. Oh, God! it is too hard for mortal man to bear! They might have let me enjoy a few months, a few weeks of happiness in her affection, but to call her mine one day and to lose her the next—I shall kill myself. I cannot live without her!’
‘Hush, my dear Frederick, hush!’ replied Philip, ‘God’s hand is very heavy upon you, but you must not blaspheme. Was not this beautiful creature His aswell as yours? May He not do as He wills with His own? No one denies the awful grief you are called upon to bear, but you cannot lessen it by raving against the justice of the Almighty. Rather bend with submission to His decree, my dear cousin, and live your future life so as you may meet your wife again. You can think of nothing now but your exceeding loss, but when you have time to consider, you will realise that she is not really gone, only hidden from your natural sight for a little while, and that, if you choose it, you are bound to meet her again and to dwell with her for ever!’
This thought broke down the unhappy man.
‘Oh! my Jenny, my Jenny!’ he sobbed, ‘is it possible you are looking on your wretched husband now? that you pity and love him and will wait for him at the eternal gates? Philip, Philip, is this a judgment on me? I have been thinking ever since it happened of that unfortunategirl, Rhoda Berry, at Luton! I cannot get her out of my head! All last night I fancied I saw her grinning and rejoicing at my misfortune. Has God done this out of anger for my sin? Has He made my sweet innocent wife the scapegoat for my iniquity? Was it the blood of the other woman, crying up from the eternal depths for vengeance, that caused my angel to take a false step and meet with her death over those dreadful cliffs? The idea has nearly driven me mad! Tell me it is not true!’
‘My dear cousin—my dear brother, for such you are in affection to me—I cannot say that this loss has not been sent by the Almighty Father to wake you to a sense of the sinful life you have been leading. I should be false to my trust and to my belief were I to say so. But for whatever reason it has been permitted, it has come in love, Frederick, from a Father Who cannot see you ruin your hopes of everlasting happiness, but would have the soul of your beloved wife, andyour own soul as well, in His keeping. My dear Fred, you must know that you were wrong, not only to marry this poor child under the existing circumstances, but to marry her without the consent of her parents. Think of the trouble you have brought upon them, those poor old people, who had no one to solace their age but this young creature who lies before us. Frederick, my dear cousin, I know you don’t believe in prayer, but let me pray for you and forher, that she may be received into the ranks of those who shall be saved hereafter, even though as by fire!’
‘Do you mean to say she is not happy now? That she has not already entered into the joys of Heaven?’ asked Frederick anxiously.
‘My dear cousin, you have surely not so far forgotten the precepts of our Holy Church as to imagine that Heaven is obtained without purgatory—bliss without self-sacrifice. This poor girl, however innocent and blameless she mayhave seemed, will have her expiation to pass through, as well as all of us. But we can pray for her, that she may find relief. We can yield up our own wishes, our own pleasures, that she may the sooner pass from purgatory to Paradise. Much will rest with you. Your future life will make or mar her progress to the gates of Heaven!’
‘It shall not mar it,’ replied Frederick, brokenly; ‘my life is worth nothing to me now, and I will give it into your hands and Father Tasker’s to do with as you think fit!’
Philip Walcheren smiled inwardly, not sardonically, for he was in earnest if man ever was, but with sublime satisfaction that the Almighty had seen fit to deliver the soul of this bruised reed into the power of the Church. He had no doubt now but that his hopes for his cousin’s future were assured, and the poisoned barb had gone home so deeply that whilst the sting lasted he would be able to wield Frederick as he chose. But he was tooprudent to press the subject home at the present moment. He contented himself with consoling his cousin to the best of his ability, always keeping before him the power and influence of the Blessed Mother of God, and her interest in the souls of young girls, like the poor dead child before them, until the miserable husband was almost supplicating the Virgin of his boyhood, then and there, to save his darling from the pit his misdeeds had drawn her into—he, who had not breathed a prayer for years past.
Philip Walcheren stayed by him all through that night and until the coroner’s jury assembled on the following afternoon. At the appointed hour a noise, as of the trampling of many feet, sounded in the public bar of the house, and Philip touched Frederick gently on the shoulder.
‘Fred, dear old man, rouse yourself. Here are the coroner and jury coming to view the body. And Mr Crampton and Mr Hindes wish to come in first. Be brave, my dear cousin. It is a painfulbut necessary ordeal. Stand apart a little and let your wife’s father have access to the body. It is his right, you know.’
The young man stood up mechanically, and taking Philip’s arm staggered to the other side of the room. Mr Crampton entered, leaning on Henry Hindes. The latter was suffering the tortures of the damned. His eyes were not still for a moment, and his whole frame shook and quivered. The sight of the crushed and pallid corpse struck both men like a heavy blow. Old Crampton gazed at it for a minute, muttering, ‘My God! My God! can that be my Jenny?’ but Hindes said nothing, and kept his eyes turned on Frederick Walcheren. Presently Mr Crampton’s followed suit, and the sight appeared to rouse him into fury.
‘Yes!’ he exclaimed, brandishing his stick, ‘there lies my murdered child, and there stands her murderer.’
‘Crampton, Crampton, think what you are saying!’ cried Hindes, shaking hisfriend’s arm, whilst Philip Walcheren said angrily, ‘If the effect of this sad sight, which should draw two men in misfortune together, is only to cause you to make malevolent and unjustifiable accusations, sir, I shall be compelled, as my cousin’s friend, to request you to leave the room. This lady may have been your daughter, but she was his wife, and as such, no one has a right to intrude upon his grief.’
‘Ay, Ay! a wife he stole from me, sir—that hestolefrom me, and murdered!’ repeated the old man, shaking with rage.
‘Gentlemen, I must beg you to clear the room,’ said the landlord at this juncture. ‘The coroner and jury are coming in to view the body.’
His wife, entering at the same time, hustled them all into another apartment, where they sat glaring at each other, until their time came to be called to appear and give evidence. The coroner, a Mr Procter, rather prided himself on his astuteness. He was for ever findinga mountain in a molehill, for he hoped to mount the magisterial chair some day, and his aim was to impress the public with his cleverness and ingenuity. The first witnesses called were the two boatmen Jackson and Barnes, who had found Jenny’s body lying at the bottom of the cliffs.
‘It was five o’clock or nigh upon it, please yer honour,’ commenced the spokesman, ‘as I and my mate here went to the lower beach to haul up our boats.’
‘What do you call the “lower beach”?’ snapped Mr Procter, who was a sandy-haired man, with a pimply face and red-rimmed eyes, ‘all the beach is lower than the cliffs.’
‘Yes, yer honour; but we calls the beach below Dragon’s Foot the lower beach, because so be, when the tide runs out—’
‘You are not here to tell us when the tide runs out, but to say how you discovered the body of the deceased Jane Emily Walcheren,’ said the coroner, consulting his papers.
‘Yes, yer worship. Well! as I and my mate here was a-haulin’ up the boats, I says to him, I says, “Bob,” I says, “what be that ’ere bundle of white,” I says, “under the cliff?” “Blowed if I know,” he says, “it looks like a sheet as has blowed over in drying,” he says.’
‘You are not here to tell the jury what your mate thought the body looked like. You are to tell us how you found it.’
‘Yes, sir. Well, sir, we thought it was a sheet, you see, but when we went to pick it up, we see it was a young woman. So we lifted her atween us and carries her to this ’ere ’ouse, and then my mate he fetches Dr M‘Coll. And that’s all, sir!’
‘Very good! Now, tell us, please, when you found the body was there no one about?’
‘Not a soul as we see, my lord—I mean, yer worship—the beach was empty from hend to hend.’
‘And the cliffs?’
‘Didn’t see a soul on the cliffs neither, yer worship.’
‘You met no one on your way here? You are sure!’
‘Quite sure, your honour! ’Twould be all over the town if we had!’
‘Very well! You can sit down. Call Dr M‘Coll!’
The doctor, having been sworn, deposed that he had been called to the ‘Bottle and Spurs’ at about six o’clock on Saturday night, to see the deceased. She was then quite dead—had been dead for two or three hours. There was a large bruise on the temple caused by her striking against the rocks in her fall. That was of itself sufficient to have caused death, but the spine was broken and the neck. The body was also much bruised. There was no question but that the deceased had met her death by falling over the cliffs.
‘Now, Dr M‘Coll, I should like to put a few questions to you, if you please,’ said Mr Procter, looking his very sharpest.‘Is it your opinion that the deceased must inevitably have fallen over the cliffs of her own accord? Might she not have been blown over, or pushed over, or thrown herself over by design?’
‘Certainly she might! It is impossible to say how she came to fall over, but shedidfall over—that is beyond a question.’
‘Ah!’ said the coroner, with self-satisfaction, as if he had discovered a very knotty point. ‘Then you consider death was due—’
‘To dislocation of the spine from a fall over the cliffs.’
‘That’s your opinion, is it?’ remarked the coroner, dubiously.
‘Yes, sir, that’s my opinion,’ replied M‘Coll shortly, as he retired.
The next witness was Crampton. He came tottering into the room, and stood supporting himself on his silver-mounted cane.
‘You are, I believe, the father of the deceased, Mr Crampton,’ began thecoroner, scrutinising the old man through his eye-glasses.
‘I am, sir. She was my only child—the only one I had left.’
‘And she was married on the Friday preceding her death?’
‘She was, worse luck!’
‘Was her marriage undertaken with your consent, Mr Crampton?’
At this question, the old man became violently agitated.
‘It was not, sir. She was stolen from me by a villain, who came to my house under the disguise of friendship, and—’
Some one in the jury remarked that this was quite irrelevant to the evidence on hand, but Mr Procter ordered him to be silent.
‘This poor gentleman has sustained a double injury,’ he said. ‘Let him tell his story in his own words.’
‘I have not much more to say, gentlemen,’ resumed Mr Crampton. ‘This man, Frederick Walcheren, stole my daughter from me, and the next thing I hear is thatshe is dead. It is not a long story, but it is a very bitter one.’
‘And you have the full sympathy of the jury for it, Mr Crampton. I believe your daughter was your heiress. Did you threaten to make any alteration in your will if she went against your wishes?’
‘I did. I said that if she married this Walcheren, who is a Papist, she shouldn’t have a halfpenny.’
‘Did you make the same intimation to Mr Walcheren?’
‘I think not, at least personally, but I suppose she did, for they ran away together two days afterwards. And this is the end of it—this is the end.’
‘You have recognised the deceased as your daughter?’
The father broke down.
‘Oh, yes, sir, I have recognised her only too well. My poor pretty darling. She was called the “Beauty of Hampstead,” sir, the “Beauty of Hampstead.”’
‘Thank you, Mr Crampton, that will do. I am sorry to have troubled you so far,but it was necessary. You can retire, sir. Call Mr Henry Hindes.’
The witness entered the room, with a pallid face, compressed lips, as if resolved that nothing should make him betray himself, and a stolid demeanour which was wholly put on. The stakes were too high. He could not afford to think or fear. All he had to do was to believe things werenot so, and to act accordingly.
‘You look ill, Mr Hindes. Do you wish for a chair?’
‘Certainly not! But I am an old friend of the family. I have known the deceased from a child.’
‘Ah! We will detain you as short a time as possible. You were in Dover, Mr Hindes, on Saturday last, I believe. Will you tell the jury why you came here?’
‘I came at the instigation, and with the knowledge, of my old friends Mr and Mrs Crampton, to bring a message to their daughter, and to see if I could effect a reconciliation between them.’
‘Between them and the young couple?’
‘No, not with Mr Walcheren—they steadfastly refused to see or speak with Mr Walcheren—but with his wife, their daughter.’
‘How could a reconciliation be effected with one and not with the other?’
‘Because Miss Crampton—the deceased—had married without the consent of her people, and her father had cut her out of his will. But, as the marriage was somewhat irregular—’
‘How was it irregular?’
‘Miss Crampton was not of age, and Mr Walcheren swore, when he procured the licence, that she was!’
‘Oh! he did!’ said the coroner, making a note of the fact on his papers; ‘and Mr Crampton cut the deceased out of his will in consequence?’
‘He did so, or meant to do so, but he sent me here with a message to the effect that if she would return home, and permit the marriage to be annulled, he would receive her back, but on no other terms.’
‘And may I ask what the lady said when you delivered that message to her?’
‘I never delivered it! I did not see her! I called twice at the Castle Warden Hotel, but each time was told that she was out, so I returned to town without seeing her!’
‘And you did not see Mr Walcheren either?’
‘I did not see Mr Walcheren either.’
‘Upon which you returned to town?’
‘Yes! I went up by the five-thirty train.’
‘One moment, Mr Hindes. Can you tell me if Mr Walcheren was aware of Mr Crampton’s intention to cut his daughter out of his willbeforethis marriage took place?’
‘I do not know! I was deputed once to make Mr Crampton’s wishes relative to his daughter known to Mr Walcheren, and the risk may have been mentioned, but he would not take it as a definite decision from me. The chief objectionalways brought forward was to his religion. Mr Crampton would not hear of his daughter marrying a Roman Catholic.’
‘Of course not! very natural!’ observed Mr Procter, who, like most of the middle classes in England, was an ultra-Protestant, and only connected Catholicism with monasteries, nunneries, fasting, confession and the Grand Inquisition.
‘That will do, Mr Hindes! you can stand down,’ said the coroner, with a smile. The next witnesses examined were Mr Cameron, the landlord of the Castle Warden, and the waiters and chambermaids, who had or had not seen poor Jenny Walcheren leave the hotel on that fatal day.
Then came a call for the last witness—the witness whom Mr Procter had purposely reserved to the last.
‘Tell Mr Frederick Walcheren he is required.’
But Philip Walcheren stepped forward instead.
‘Are you the husband of the deceased, sir?’
‘No! I am his cousin. I have come to ask you if his presence and testimony on this, the most trying occasion of his life, cannot be dispensed with? He is half beside himself with grief. Picture to yourself, gentlemen, a young husband bereft the very day after his wedding of all that made his life happy. He is not in a fit state to answer any questions, nor to have his inmost feelings submitted to scrutiny. Besides, he knows no more than you do! He parted with his poor wife in radiant health and spirits on Saturday morning, and never saw her again until she lay on that table as you have seen her. The doctor has given you his testimony that her death was the result of a pure accident! Is it necessary, then, that my poor cousin should be tortured by recalling in public the memories that are nearly driving him out of his mind.’
‘It is absolutely necessary, Mr Walcheren,’replied the coroner, ‘the husband’s testimony may prove the most important of all. I cannot, in the pursuit of my duty, excuse the presence of your cousin. Call Mr Frederick Walcheren.’
And all eyes were turned eagerly towards the door, to watch the advent of the greatest sufferer of all by this most hapless adventure.
END OF VOL. I.
COLSTON AND COMPANY, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
Transcriber's noteMinor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. The following Printer errors have been changed:CHANGEDFROMTOPage2:“by-and-bye”“by-and-by”Page21:“dinner-time”“dinner time”Page21:“half-an-hour”“half an hour”Page40“unbrella”“umbrella”Page47:“anyone of the other”“any one of the other”Page49:“spend-thrift”“spendthrift”Page56:“Well, really, father”“Well, really, Father”Page57:“liason”“liaison”Page61:“six thirty”“six-thirty”Page67:“promise not see”“promise not to see”Page78:“prententions”“pretensions”Page80:“Brunnel”“Brunell”Page95:“think off”“think of”Page111:“Your’s”“Yours”Page132:“remains of breakfast was”“remains of the breakfast were”Page138:“paralysed us us”“paralysed us”Page155:“half-an-hour”“half an hour”Page161:“he begun”“he began”Page169:“out of her’s”“out of hers”Page202:“chosing his words”“choosing his words”Page210:“ividly white”“vividly white”Page210:“s probably something”“is probably something”Page227:“if the effect”“If the effect”Page228:“Proctor”“Procter”Page232:“Proctor”“Procter”Page238:“of hs”“of his”All other inconsistencies are as in the original.
Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. The following Printer errors have been changed:
All other inconsistencies are as in the original.