Mention has been made of a certain Mr. Hodgson, as being the intermediary through whom John Brancker and his sister received into their charge and keeping the little three-years-old child, Hermia Rivers. It has also been told how the said Mr. Hodgson was in the habit of calling upon John once a year, apparently with the object of satisfying himself that Hermia was alive and well, and that everything, as far as she was concerned, was progressing satisfactorily.
Mr. Hodgson's annual visit, the date of which he made a point of communicating to John beforehand, had nearly always taken place during the month of April, but this year he wrote some weeks earlier than usual to announce that he might be looked for at Nairn Cottage on the following day. The letter came to hand about a week after John's departure for London; but Miss Brancker, feeling sure who it was from, made no scruple about opening it.
The notice given was so short that there was no time to communicate with John previously to Mr. Hodgson's arrival, so Miss Brancker, who had met the lawyer several times already, made up her mind to "tackle" him single-handed; indeed, she was rather glad than otherwise that on this occasion her brother happened to be out of the way. More than once since a certain discussion John had avowed his intention of turning over the twelve hundred pounds to Mr. Hodgson when next he saw him, and after explaining to him of what it consisted, telling him in plain terms that he would have nothing more to do with it. Miss Brancker, however, had other views in her mind as to the ultimate destination of the money of which she said nothing to anyone, and she was determined not to touch on the question with Mr. Hodgson.
There was one point as to which she decided that it might be advisable to enlighten her visitor. She would make no secret of Hermia's engagement to Clement Hazeldine. If the girl had any parents or near relatives living, it seemed no more than right--their having discarded her when a child, notwithstanding--that such an important event in her life should be made known to them, although whether it would receive their sanction, supposing them to interest themselves in the matter at all, and what would be the result if it did not, were questions which the future alone could determine.
"In any case," said the spinster to herself, "if my telling Mr. Hodgson results in nothing else, it may, perhaps, have the effect of bringing to light some facts connected with Hermia's parentage and the history of her early years. If the knowledge that she is engaged to be married fails to do so, we may give up all hope of ever learning more than we know at present."
Mr. Hodgson presented himself at the Cottage in due course. He was a thin, dried-up atomy of a man, apparently close on seventy years of age, with a very remarkably developed aquiline nose--a nose which not infrequently caused irreverent boys to make rude remarks as he passed them in the street. Miss Brancker had told Hermia that she was expecting him, and although the girl's color changed for the moment, she received the news with a sort of proud indifference, and as though it were a matter which could be of no possible concern to her.
"As it happens, Mr. Hodgson, my brother is away in London just now on important business," said Aunt Charlotte, "and, consequently, will be unable to see you."
"Aye, aye; is that so? Well, he could not have left me a more charming substitute," replied the lawyer, with a touch of old-fashioned gallantry. "And how is Missy?"--it was the term he had always applied to Hermia when she was a schoolgirl--"quite well and hearty, I trust."
"Quite well, sir, I am happy to say. But probably you would like to see her."
"For a couple of minutes, if you have no objection, dear madam. I will not detain her long."
It had been the practice for Mr. Hodgson to dine at Nairn Cottage on each recurring annual visit, but John being away, it seemed to Miss Brancker out of the question that he should do so in the present instance. She had not, however, forgotten her visitor's fondness for old port, and a decanter of it, together with a plate of biscuits, was now brought in; whereupon, in obedience to his hostess's request, the old gentleman, nothing loth, proceeded to pour out for himself a glass of wine.
Then Miss Brancker rang the bell again, and a few seconds later Hermia, who had been expecting the summons, entered the room. A faint flush suffused her cheeks, but her manner was perfectly cool and composed.
Mr. Hodgson stood up and extended a withered hand, and peered at her through his gold-rimmed spectacles. "Well, my dear, I trust that I see you in perfect health," he began; "but, indeed, you cannot be otherwise, if eyes and cheeks may be believed, and I am not aware that they are in the habit of telling untruths. Upon my word, you are vastly improved--you may allow an old man to say so without offence--vastly improved since I saw you last."
Hermia murmured something, withdrew her hand, and sat down a little distance away.
Then there followed a little conversation, chiefly about the weather and such-like indifferent topics, in which Hermia took no part, while Mr. Hodgson indulged in occasional appreciative sips at his wine. Now that Hermia had been told the object of his yearly visits, she could not help regarding him with a certain amount of curiosity and interest. In the brain behind that withered mask of a face lay hidden the secret of her birth and parentage; those pinched lips, had they but so willed, could doubtless have told her something about the mother of whom she retained no faintest recollection, if it were only her name and whether she was living or dead. But no question on the subject should ever escape her; the knowledge must come to her unsought if it were ever to come at all.
Presently a timid ring at the front door made itself heard. "It is Mrs. Nokes," said Aunt Charlotte to Hermia. "Will you attend to her, dear?"
Mrs. Nokes was one of Miss Brancker's weekly pensioners. Hermia was glad of an excuse for escaping from the room.
"There is one circumstance," Mr. Hodgson, "which it may, perhaps, be as well to mention to you," said Miss Brancker, as soon as they were alone. "Hermia is engaged to be married."
The old gentleman fairly jumped in his chair. "Bless my heart! Engaged to be married? You surprise me, madam--you surprise me greatly! Why was I not communicated with before now? Why was I not consulted? Why----?"
"My dear sir, you seem to forget that you have never favored us with your address. We know no more today where a letter would find you than we knew seventeen years ago when my brother and you had your first interview."
Mr. Hodgson stroked his chin and coughed. "To be sure--to be sure. For the moment that little fact had escaped my memory. Still, it is most unfortunate. Had I dreamed when I was here last that anything of the sort was likely to happen I would certainly have left you an address through which you could have communicated with me. But before discussing the matter further, I should like to be informed who and what the person is on whom Miss Rivers has seen fit to bestow her affections."
Thereupon Miss Brancker proceeded to enlighten him: and one may be sure that the portrait of Clement Hazeldine which she drew for her visitor lacked nothing on the score of eulogy. The old lawyer listened in silence; when she had done, he said:
"Then, it is your opinion that Miss Rivers is really in earnest in this affair, and that it is not one of those idle engagements into which--so I have been given to understand--numbers of young women drift for want of something better to do; and from which they emerge, if circumstances run contrary to their wishes, heart-whole and fancy-free, ready and eager to engage in the fray again, only, of course, with a different Strephon?"
"Hermia has nothing in common with the class of young women to whom you refer. That her affections are very deeply involved I am as certain as that I am now talking to you, nor have I any hesitation in saying that were she compelled to break off her engagement with Clement Hazeldine it would go far towards wrecking her happiness, if not for life, in any case for a long time to come."
"Aye, aye!--is that so? Your charming sex, my dear madam, are kittle cattle to deal with. The particular point at issue is, however, one as to which at present I can offer no decided opinion. As you will have surmised long ago, I am not acting in Miss Rivers' affairs for myself alone. I am merely an instrument, whose function it is to carry out the instructions deputed to me by others. All I can say just now is, that you shall hear from me at the earliest possible moment, and that, till then, matters may as well remain as they are."
After Mr. Hodgson was gone, Miss Brancker did not fail to call to mind that he had never once made the slightest allusion to John's imprisonment and trial; and, furthermore, that the name of Hazeldine had seemed to awake no echo in his memory of the dread tragedy with which it had been associated so short a time before. Was his silence due to the fact that the annals of crime possessed no interest for him, and that he shunned the reading of them; or was it simply the result of a failure of memory? Of course, another theory was possible--that he had read and recollected everything bearing on the murder and trial, and that he was silent about them of set purpose. In any case, it was open to Miss Brancker to adopt which of the three theories might seem most feasible to her.
Four days later the afternoon post brought Miss Brancker a letter from Mr. Hodgson, in which she was informed that the engagement between Miss Rivers and Mr. Clement Hazeldine must at once be broken off, the young lady's friends having other views and intentions with regard to her future, which would be made known at the proper time. The writer, it was added, would feel obliged by an immediate reply assuring him that the instructions conveyed in his communication had been duly carried out.
Aunt Charlotte gave the letter to Hermia to read, and she, as a matter of course, passed it on to her lover, when he arrived at the Cottage the same evening. Then Aunt Charlotte left them alone for half an hour in order to afford them an opportunity of discussing the letter by themselves. When she re-entered the room, Hermia said at once,
"We utterly decline, Clement and I, to have our destinies ruled and controlled by an unknown autocrat, who, for anything we know to the contrary, may have no legal or moral right whatever to interpose between us. For my own part--and I want you to tell Mr. Hodgson so--I altogether refuse to consider the question in any way until I know clearly for whom he is acting, and the relationship which exists between the person or persons in question and myself. Until I am enlightened on those points, matters between myself and Clement will remain on precisely the same footing that they are on now."
Then, after a momentary pause, she added, with a heightened color, and a smile directed at her lover: "Not that it will make the slightest difference even if Mr. Hodgson chooses to tell me all there is to tell. I shall be of age in a few months, and my own mistress. The day has gone by for either Mr. Hodgson, or those who hide themselves behind him, to interfere with my destiny in any way."
She spoke with the happy confidence of her sex and age. Experience had not yet taught her that the threads which unite us to our fellows, although to all seeming as fine as those of a spider's web, may, any one of them, prove strong enough to bind us round and round like so many helpless flies, and with just as little possibility of escape.
"John will be home on Saturday," said Aunt Charlotte. "He will know in what terms to answer the letter far better than I."
The answer was to be addressed to the care of a certain firm of solicitors in Bedford Row, London.
John Brancker's month on trial was at an end, and he had written to his sister to say that she might expect him home in the course of Saturday afternoon.
"No doubt he will have to return by the first train on Monday morning," said Miss Brancker to Hermia when she had read the note.
As it happened, one of the first people whom John recognized on alighting at Ashdown station was Edward Hazeldine. They had travelled by the same train without either being aware of the other's presence. Edward saw John at the same moment. He was a little surprised at seeing him there, but at once went up and shook hands with him.
"Glad to see you, Mr. Brancker," he said, heartily. "Hope you are getting on all right in your new berth and that the work is to your liking. I suppose you have come down to spend the week-end with your people."
"I've come down for good, Mr. Edward. I'm not going back," answered John, gravely.
"Not going back!" echoed Edward, surprised, and it may be, a little dismayed. "I was certainly under the impression that you were settled with my friend Lucas for years to come, if not for life. But how has it come about? What has happened to hinder you from going back?"
It was merely the old story over again that John had to tell. For a week or more all had gone well with him. He liked his work and he liked his fellow clerks, but presently the fact oozed out somehow that John was the man who had so recently stood his trial for what was known as "the Ashdown murder," and from that moment his fate was sealed. First one and then another of the staff declined to associate with him, or to have anything to do with him beyond what was absolutely necessitated by the exigencies of business; in point of fact, poor John was completely boycotted.
"I couldn't stand another month of it, Mr. Edward; it would kill me," he said in conclusion in a quavering voice. "It seems no use trying any more. I must either stay where I am, in the hope of being able to live down the prejudice against me, or else go right away to the other side of the world. There appears to be no other choice left me."
Ephraim Judd's breakdown and collapse on that memorable Sunday morning was attributed by everyone there, except the unhappy young man himself, to a sudden attack of illness, and many were the inquiries at his mother's house later in the day by sympathizing Templetonians, who were afraid lest his unaccountable seizure might result in something still more serious. But Ephraim arose next morning and set out for the Bank at his usual time, to outward seeming as well as ever he had been, but with an inner consciousness pervading every fibre of his being, that never again would he be the same man that yesterday morning had seen him. The "gift" on which he had secretly prided himself more than on aught else life held for him, had been recalled without a moment's warning. The fountain of living water had been suddenly dried up within him. Now that by his own act he had rendered himself no longer worthy to preach the "Word" to others, the power of doing so had been withheld from him. He knew as well as if a thousand voices had dinned the fact into his ears, although others knew it not, that he stood condemned at the bar of his own conscience, as one who had wandered from the right path, for whom there was no return possible, save through the narrow gateway of confession and full acknowledgment of his grievous fault. His despair, although unseen of anyone, was none the less profound and abiding.
That winter was a long and inclement one. About the middle of March, Ephraim caught a severe cold, which he would probably have got rid of in the course of a few days--as he had of many previous colds--had he but taken ordinary care of himself. As it fell out, however, he neglected to do so, being at the time in one of those moods in which whether one lives or dies seems a matter of equal indifference. His cold became worse, and presently developed into an acute attack of pneumonia. Then, without saying a word to her son, Mrs. Judd sent for Dr. Hazeldine.
Ephraim's face flushed suddenly, and then as suddenly paled, when Clement was ushered into his room. A very brief examination sufficed to convince the young surgeon that his patient was in a somewhat critical condition. Ephraim's chest had always been delicate, besides which, at the best of times, his general health had never been robust; so that it now became a question whether his constitution would not succumb to an attack from which a stronger man would have rallied without much difficulty. There was one point in his favor; he had two capital nurses in Mrs. Judd and her daughter Eliza, the latter of whom chanced just then to be at home, while looking out for another situation.
Next morning Ephraim was decidedly worse. His bright, feverish eyes, fixed intently on Doctor Hazeldine's face, did not fail to note the grave expression which crept over it like a shadow, while listening to his patient's labored breathing, and counting the quickened beats of his pulse. Then Ephraim drew his own inference, which was little more than a confirmation of the doubts--one could scarcely have called them fears--which had beset him almost from the beginning of his illness.
"I am going to die," he said to himself, "and Clement Hazeldine knows it. But, first of all, I've something to say to him."
"Yes, I had only a poor night," he said aloud, in reply to a question of Clement; "hour after hour I lay awake, tossing and turning from side to side. Just now I feel sleepy, and not up to much talking; but there's one thing I wish you would do for me, Mr. Clement."
Among the Bank staff Mr. Hazeldine's sons had always been spoken of as "Mr. Edward" and "Mr. Clement."
"I shall be glad to do anything for you that I can, Ephraim."
"I wish you would come and sit with me this afternoon when your busy time is over, and you have half-an-hour to spare. I shall, perhaps, feel a bit stronger by that time, and I have something particular that I am anxious to tell you--something very particular, which I dare not put off any longer for fear I may not be able to tell it at all."
"Since it is your wish, I will certainly come and see you this afternoon," answered Clement. "But you must not allow your spirits to get depressed. I sincerely trust that to-morrow morning will find you much better than you are to-day."
Ephraim smiled faintly.
"You and I know better than that, Mr. Clement," was all he said, as he shut his eyes with an air of weariness.
At four o'clock Clement called again, and was shown by Eliza Judd into her brother's room. Clem felt nothing more than a very mild curiosity as to the nature of the confession, or whatever it might prove to be, which Ephraim was about to impart to him. Sick men have often strange fancies, and attach a spurious importance to things which are of no real consequence, although at such times they seem to be.
Ephraim seemed stronger and brighter than he had been earlier in the day, but Clement's experienced eyes told him that it was merely a "flash in the pan"--a condition of things which might change for the worse at any moment.
"I must ask you to put anything you have to say to me in the fewest possible words," he said gently; "indeed, I would much rather you should defer it entirely till another time."
"Another time may never come," answered Ephraim, with a sigh. "No, you must hear me now while a little strength is left me. I will promise to be as brief as possible." He was breathing hard, and his sentences were uttered brokenly and with difficulty. After closing his eyes for a few moments as if to collect his thoughts, he said: "You were at the trial of Mr. Brancker, were you not, Mr. Clement? You listened to the evidence right through from beginning to end?"
"I don't think a single point of the evidence, as sworn to by the various witnesses, escaped me."
"You will not have forgotten that one of the facts which told strongly against Mr. B., and one which he professed himself totally unable to explain, was that some of the papers in his private drawer were smeared with blood, and that there was a similar smear on the floor close by?"
"I have not forgotten. The circumstance has always struck me as being a very peculiar one."
"I am the only person who could have explained it."
Clem gave vent to an exclamation of surprise, and with that the sick man went on to relate what is known to the reader already--how, led on by an insatiable curiosity, he opened the drawer with a duplicate key; how, while groping among the contents, his hand encountered the blade of the knife and was cut by it; how the blood spurted out among the papers, and how it kept dropping on the floor while he stood talking to Obed Sweet, afraid to stir.
"And why did you omit to tell all this at the trial?" demanded Clem sternly, as the other ceased speaking, breathless and exhausted.
"That you shall learn presently. There's more to tell yet," gasped Ephraim.
Clem administered a restorative. Had his patient's revelation had reference to any matter of lesser importance than the rehabilitation of John Brancker's good name in the eyes of the world, he would have positively forbidden him to say another word; but there was no knowing how he might be on the morrow, and it might prove of vital consequence that he should tell all he knew while there was still a possibility of his being able to do so.
"Both at the inquest and the trial I perjured myself," went on the sick man. "I was asked whether I saw Mr. Brancker leave the Bank after he had parted from me, and had entered it with the avowed purpose of fetching his umbrella. My answer was that I did not see him leave the Bank. My saying so was a lie. I saw him leave it within four minutes of the time he entered it. He was there just long enough to enable him to find his umbrella, but not long enough to commit either murder or robbery, much less both, even supposing him to have been wishful of doing so.
"But what was your object in thus perjuring yourself?" demanded Clement, with an air of stupefaction. "What end had you to gain by not speaking the truth?"
"By telling the truth I should have brought about my own ruin. Mr. Avison would never have forgiven me had I confessed to opening John Brancker's drawer with a false key. He would have discharged me on the spot."
"I can understand the reasons for your reticence so far as that part of the case is concerned, but why did you swear that you had not seen Mr. Brancker leave the Bank?"
"Because I was a moral coward. When the coroner put the question to me I was flurried in my mind, and hardly knew what answer I was giving. My chief thought at the time was to divert suspicion from myself; in saying what I did I had not the slightest notion that it would tell in any way against Mr. Brancker, but having once sworn that such was the truth, I was afraid to go back from it at the trial." Then, after a little space of silence, he added: "I want you to believe this, Mr. Clement: if Mr. Brancker had been brought in guilty, I should have told all I knew, whatever might have been the cost to myself. And that is the solemn truth."
Clem was at a loss what reply to make to the strange statement of which he had been made the recipient. Both reproach and vituperation, even had he been willing to indulge in either, were out of the question with a man in his patient's condition. At length he said:
"I presume you have no objection to my telling Mr. Brancker what you have just told me, leaving him to act in the matter in whatever way may seem most advisable to him?"
"That is exactly what I am desirous you should do; and do not forget, please, to tell him how sincerely I regret the injury I have done him. That he will accord me his forgiveness is more than I dare hope."
Clement rose and took up his hat.
"I have not quite done yet," said the sick man. "What I am now about to tell you may seem of little or no consequence to you--in other words, you may take a different view of it from the one taken by me--but, in any case, it is only right that you should be told."
Clement sat down again, and waited in silence till Ephraim was ready to continue.
"You may remember," he resumed, "that at the Bank there is a spiral staircase which gives access to a couple of rooms under the roof, used chiefly as a storage place for old ledgers and documents of various kinds connected with the business?"
Clement nodded.
"The staircase in question," continued Ephraim, "is exactly opposite the door of Mr. Hazeldine's room, and anyone going up it, or coming down it, can, if so minded, obtain a view of the interior of the office through the fanlight over the door--a fact which my curiosity had led me to take advantage of on more occasions than one. On the night of Mr. Hazeldine's death, after John Brancker had gone and I had put my own work away, led by a vague curiosity, I stole halfway up the staircase and peered through the fanlight. Mr. Hazeldine's table, with Mr. Hazeldine seated at it, were clearly visible to me. Sir--Mr. Clement--while I was looking, I saw your father take out of a drawer in his table the very knife which was found near him on the floor next morning, and with which he was said to have been stabbed! He stared at it for a moment or two and tested its point with his thumb; then he unbuttoned his waistcoat, and with his left hand seemed to feel for the exact spot over his heart. Then he let the knife drop, and leaning forward over the table, he covered his face with his hands. With that, being not a little scared, I waited to see no more."
Clement sat with ashen face and horror-fraught eyes, waiting till the shock which Ephraim's words had caused him should in some measure have spent its force.
"You drew an inference of some kind from what you saw through the fanlight," he at length contrived to say, "What was the inference?"
"That Mr. Hazeldine came by his death by his own hand," replied Ephraim in a whisper.
When Clement Hazeldine called on his patient next morning he found him delirious, and on the following day Ephraim died.
Ephraim Judd's deathbed confession naturally divided itself into two parts in Clement Hazeldine's afterthoughts, of which the first had reference exclusively to John Brancker, while the second, which in Clem's eyes far exceeded the other in importance, concerned almost wholly his brother and himself. The horror with which he had listened to the latter portion of Ephraim's narrative toned itself down by degrees to a feeling of doubt, and from that, by an easy transition, to one of absolute incredulity. His father commit suicide! The bare idea of such a thing, to anyone who had known the man, was utterly preposterous. But supposing for a moment that the case had been as Ephraim implied, there still remained the robbery of the safe, which had been a concomitant incident of Mr. Hazeldine's death, to be accounted for. The truth was that the sick man's mind had wandered in the course of the previous night, and he had imagined circumstances which had never really happened. During illness the boundary line which divides the realm of fancy from that of fact is easily overpassed, and the weakened mind of the patient is unable to distinguish between the two. That such was the explanation in Ephraim's case it seemed impossible to doubt.
"Yet, if the latter part of his confession has no basis of fact, why assume that the first part had any more valid claim to credence?" Clem asked himself this question more than once, but was unable to answer it to his satisfaction. He could not but admit that that part of the confession which related to John Brancker seemed to bear upon it the stamp of truth; the facts, if facts they were, as told by Ephraim, might very easily have happened; there was nothing intrinsically improbable about them, as there was about that other statement which had reference to Mr. Hazeldine.
Most of us have an easy habit of trying to persuade ourselves that things are as we wish them to be, and this was what Clement strove to do in the present instance, but not altogether successfully. The first portion of Ephraim's confession might be true, and probably was so, he told himself; but the second part was almost as surely fictitious--a vision conjured up by the disordered brain of a sick man.
Clement was anxious to see his brother at the earliest possible moment, and unburthen his mind to him; but it was not till the day after Ephraim's death that he found time to go over to Beecham. On arriving at the Brewery he walked straight into his brother's office feeling pretty sure that he should find him there. Nor was he mistaken. Edward, who was busy writing a letter as he entered, looked up and nodded, and with that Clem sat down to wait till he should be at liberty.
"Glad to see you," said Edward, as he applied the blotting-paper to his letter. "But, you look a bit worried. Anything the matter?"
"Ned," said the younger brother, leaning forward a little, and fixing his eyes intently on the other's face, "have you ever had any cause or reason to suspect that our father, instead of meeting his death at the hand of another, as everyone believed he did, committed suicide?"
On the instant every vestige of color fled from Edward Hazeldine's face; he drew a deep breath that was almost a gasp, and set his teeth hard.
"Great heavens! Edward, you do know, or suspect something of the sort!" cried Clement, staring at his brother's white face and drawn mouth, and feeling for the moment as if the foundations of his life were crumbling under him.
"Yes, I do know," said Edward, after a space of silence, speaking in cold, and, as it seemed, half-defiant tones. "I have known it all along. James Hazeldine was not murdered. He died by his own hand, in order to avert disgrace and ruin from himself and those belonging to him."
Then, before Clement could find a word to say, he rose, and crossing to a safe imbedded in the wall, he unlocked it, and from one of the drawers drew forth his father's letter.
"Read and believe," he said with stern brevity, as he pushed the letter across the table to Clem.
He had been so taken by surprise; the question so abruptly put to him, had afforded him no clue as to how much or how little of the truth was known to his brother, that for the moment his presence of mind had deserted him, and before he had time to recover himself, Clem had challenged the truth.
"Well, he has got the truth now, and much good may it do him," said Edward, grimly, to himself. "Why should he not share it with me? The burthen has been a bitter one to bear. It has led me to do things such as at one time I would have believed no power on earth could have forced me into doing. Yes, let Clem take his share. He is a grown man; why should we not halve the secret? I am not sorry that it has come about as it has. But how and from whom did he obtain the clue?"
Clem read the letter twice over, the first time quickly, and then slowly and deliberately, so that the pith and almost the exact words of each sentence burned themselves indelibly into his memory. Then he refolded it and passed it back to his brother, and then the two sat and looked at each other for a little while in sorrowful silence. Clement was the first to speak.
"You have known this all along, and yet you never told me," he said, with an accent of reproach.
"Where was the need? What good end would it have served? It was enough that one of us should have to carry such a secret about with him. I was the elder, and the burden devolved of right upon me. Besides, my father evidently relied upon my telling no one--not even you."
"It was my duty and my right to have shared it with you. In any case, I am glad--if, indeed, one can be glad about anything in connection with so terrible a secret--that the knowledge has come to me now instead of later on."
"Could I have had my way, it would never have come to you. But before we discuss the matter further, tell me what led you to put that question to me which you flung at my head, as it were, with such startling suddenness."
Thereupon Clement proceeded to enlighten his brother as to all that had passed between himself and Ephraim Judd.
"It is a strange story," said Edward, when he had finished; "but I see no reason for doubting its credibility. All along I have been possessed by a sort of intuitive certainty that one day the truth would leap to light in a way the least expected, and now it has done so. After all, it will be a relief to have someone to share the secret with."
"You should have shared it with me from the first. But the question now is, what ought to be done next?"
"I scarcely follow you."
"I mean, as regards John Brancker. Ought he not to be told?"
"Told what?"
"What Ephraim Judd told me. It was the last wish of the dying man, as expressed by him to me, that such reparation should be made as was still possible."
"Just so! You would tell John Brancker all about the blood-smears, and also reveal to him the fact that Judd saw him quit the Bank five minutes after he had entered it, although at the trial he swore to the contrary. This you would tell, leaving Brancker to deal with the statement in whatever way might seem most advisable to him."
"That is precisely what I have thought of doing. So far everything seems perfectly clear. But, as regards the latter portion of the confession--supplemented as it is by our father's letter--that concerns John Brancker infinitely more than all the rest."
For the second time the eyes of the brothers met in a long, steady gaze.
"John Brancker was tried for a crime of which he was innocent, and was acquitted," said Edward, in a hard, cold voice. "To-day he is a free man--as free as you or I."
"But is that all? You know as well as I that it is not. Think of all he has suffered and gone through. Consider----"
"I have considered--for I can foresee all you would urge. I have thought it over long ago from every possible point of view. It is for you to consider and to realize that there is an altogether different way of looking at the affair from the one you have chosen to adopt, one, too, which concerns you and me very nearly. With your good leave, I will proceed to make clear to you what I mean."
He got up, and crossing to a side table, poured out for himself a glass of water.
"It was within a couple of hours of hearing of my father's death," resumed Edward, "that I read the letter which you have seen to-day for the first time. The news had been broken to me by the very man we have been talking of--I mean by Judd--and I had just come back from the Bank after viewing my father's body. I will leave you to imagine the effect the letter had on me at such a time. Knowing what I did, no one could have been more surprised than I at the turn taken by the affair at the inquest, when one little piece of circumstantial evidence after another cropped up, all tending to bring home the crime to John Brancker, and it was a great shock to me when he was committed for trial. Had you been in my place, rather than let him go to prison, in all probability you would have made public the facts embodied in your father's letter."
"I certainly should have done so," said Clement, gravely.
"I preferred to hold on, taking care, meanwhile, to secure an eminent advocate for the defense. There were many weak links in the chain of evidence, and it seemed to me that no jury would convict the prisoner without something stronger to go upon. The event proved that I was right in my belief. John Brancker was acquitted."
"Truly so; but can you even faintly realize the mental torture he must have suffered meanwhile? Can you----"
Edward held up his hand. "My dear fellow, I hope you do not for one moment imagine that I did not feel keenly for Brancker. My heart bled for him many and many a time. I seemed to myself to have added ten years to my age during those weeks that he lay in prison. I would willingly have given half of all I had in the world if by so doing I could have reversed the verdict of the Coroner's jury. But all that belongs to the past. What I want you to do now is to realize for yourself what would have been the effect on the fortunes of those he left behind him had I made known the contents of my father's letter. In the first place, your mother and sister would have been reduced to pauperism, or next door to it."
"How could that have come about?" demanded Clem, with a startled look.
"Because, had it become known that my father committed suicide deliberately and intentionally, and without any mitigating plea of mental derangement, his life policy of twelve thousand pounds would have been forfeited; and that, as you are aware, forms nearly the sole resource of your mother and sister."
"I had not thought of that," responded Clem. Neither had he. He had been so shocked at finding that the manner of his father's death had been known to Edward from the first, and that he had chosen to hush it up, that for the time being his mind had failed to grasp any of the consequences, near or remote, on which his brother had based his action in the affair.
"That would have been bad enough in all conscience," resumed Edward, "but worse, much worse, would have followed. Had my father's case been one of simple suicide, that might have been got over, painful though it would have been; but his letter has told you what there was in the background. One would have been only a misfortune, such as might happen in any family, but the other meant disgrace and social ruin to everyone connected with him. Could either you or I have ever held up our heads again in Ashdown? I am quite sure that I could not. I should have had to give up my position and all my prospects in life, and go away to some place where the name of Hazeldine had no taint of disgrace attached to it. Then, again, think what it would have meant to my mother and Fanny. They, too, would have had to seek some distant home, with poverty for their abiding companion. It would have gone far towards breaking my mother's heart, if it did not altogether do so, and who would knowingly marry the daughter of a man who----? But, surely, not another word is needed."
"It is a terrible picture that you have drawn," said Clement, with an involuntary catching of his breath. In one brief half-hour he felt as if he had taken leave of his youth forever.
"Is it in any one respect an overcharged picture? You cannot conscientiously say that it is."
It was impossible for Clement Hazeldine to say that the picture painted by his brother, dark though its colors were, was in any respect overdrawn. In truth, he knew not what reply to make. He sat silently revolving in his mind the various features of the case as they had been presented by Edward, who was now beginning to turn over the letters and papers on his table in a way which seemed to imply, or Clement thought so, that the point at issue had been thoroughly threshed out, and that any further discussion of it would be both distasteful and a waste of time. In point of fact, Edward was congratulating himself on having brought a very awkward bit of business to so satisfactory a conclusion. In all probability Clem would never allude to it again; it would be a secret between them--one that must never be breathed to a living soul, but equally one which they would never care to discuss with each other, nor to reopen in any way.
A movement on Clem's part drew Edward's attention to him. A sudden light had leapt to his eyes, a flush to his cheeks. What awkward question was he about to put now?
"Edward, it has just struck me for the first time, that if father really did put an end to his existence--and I am afraid we must accept it as the saddest of all sad facts that he did so--we had no right to claim the amount of his life policy from the Insurance Company."
It was now the turn of Edward Hazeldine to change color. Two vivid spots of red flamed out in his cheeks. "Yes," he exclaimed, in a harsh, strained voice, "I have been wondering whether that would be one of the points of objection which you would see fit to raise."
"It is one which failed to strike me till the present moment."
"What would you have done, I wonder, had you been in my place? That is a question which you will do well to think over at your leisure. Had a claim for the twelve thousand pounds not been sent in in due course, comment would have been aroused, which would inevitably have bred suspicion, and that, in its turn, would probably have led to inquiry; and what the latter, when once set afoot, would have led to, you can judge as well as I. Besides, what excuse could I have made to my mother and Fannie for not claiming the amount? I could have made no excuse; everything must have been told them. In addition, as I have already explained to you, without the twelve thousand pounds they would only have been a step or two removed from pauperism--in which case the fact of my not having claimed on the policy must have become known to everybody. Bah! I might just as well have gone and read out my father's letter at the market cross."
"All that in no way alters the character of the transaction," said Clem, in a low voice.
"Oh, it was a fraud--a gross and palpable fraud--I fully admit that," exclaimed the elder brother, with a harsh laugh. "Even to myself I have never attempted to call it by any other name; only, when you are weighing it in your thoughts, I should like you to put into the opposite scale the trifling facts I have just laid before you. To you they may seem to weigh less than they did with me; but no man can gauge accurately the force of another's temptations. Enough, however, of this for the present." He rose with an air of weariness and looked at his watch.
It was a palpable hint, and Clem accepted it as such. He, too, rose. "John Brancker tells me," he said, "that he happened to meet you at the station on the day of his return from London, and that he explained to you the reason why he had been compelled to resign the situation you found for him."
Edward's face darkened a little.
"Yes, he gave me his version of the affair; but I can't help saying that he seems to me to be excessively thin-skinned. I certainly should not have allowed myself to be put down in the way he seems to have done."
"A rather extreme sensitiveness to the opinion of others is as much a part of John as the color of his hair or the shape of his nose. Think what it must have been to a man of his temperament to go through all that he has gone through during the last six months! You and I, who are of tougher fibre, can but partially realize it. And what is to become of him in the future? The shadow of a crime with which he had nothing whatever to do still clings to him, and may do so for years to come. He is eating his heart out in dumb despair."
Edward Hazeldine took two or three turns from end to end of his office, his eyes bent on the ground and his hands buried deep in his pockets. The whole interview had been inexpressibly galling to him. He was one of those men to whom it is as wormwood and rue to be called upon to explain their reasons for any particular course of action, much more to apologize for it; yet he had felt under the necessity of doing both to-day, and now a query had been put to him which he would fain have answered, but could not. What, indeed, was to become of John Brancker? But before trying in any way to answer that awkward question, he felt that it behoved him to put himself right with Clem on one important point, much as it would cost him to do so.
"That I tacitly allowed John Brancker to be brought in guilty by a coroner's jury," he said, "that I allowed him to languish in prison for eight or nine weeks, and be brought to trial, when a dozen words from me would have made a free man of him--are facts which I have neither the power nor the wish to gainsay; but if you therefore imagine that in case the trial had gone against him, I would not then have spoken out and proclaimed our shame and disgrace to the world, you were never more utterly mistaken in your life. I was fully determined to keep my secret--our secret--till the last possible moment--I have already told you my motives for so doing--but not a moment longer. Had the second verdict proved a confirmation of the first, my father's letter would at once have been handed to the judge. I trust you believe that I am telling you the truth."
"I do believe it," said Clem, emphatically.
"You spoke just now of what John Brancker must have suffered during the weary weeks he lay in prison. I greatly doubt whether his sufferings were as poignant as mine. He was buoyed up and strengthened by the consciousness of innocence, while I---- But why pursue the topic? This only I will say in conclusion, that the last six months have been the most wretched of my life, and not for ten thousand pounds would I, of my own free will, go through such an experience again.
"I can fully credit that," replied Clem, earnestly, "and although the result of the trial must unquestionably have lifted a great weight off your mind, still--if I know anything of you, if you are the man I have always believed you to be--your burthen is but half removed. You are far from being clear of it yet."
Edward threw a quick, suspicious glance at his brother.
"Excuse me, Clem, if I fail to apprehend your meaning," he said, coldly.
"Is it not plain enough? How can you be the same man that you were before our father's death while you continue to keep to yourself the knowledge which would clear John Brancker from every iota of suspicion, and give him back the stainless character, and with it the happiness, of which you have deprived him? How can you look to regain that peace of mind which was your dearest possession, although you may not have known it at the time; how can you look your fellows in the face with untroubled eyes, knowing, as you do, that as the consequence of a deliberate act on your part, your mother and sister are living on the proceeds of a fraud? The fruits of wrong-doing never prove other than dust and ashes to those who pluck them."
They had both sat down again without thinking what they were about, and they now confronted each other across the office table. Clem's face was paler than ordinary, but never had he looked more like his brother than at that moment. The determination and quiet energy with which he had spoken had, for the time being, lent to his face some of the resolute lines and the firm, set expression which were characteristic of Edward.
"So that is your meaning, is it?" demanded the latter, with a sudden hoarseness in his voice.
"It is a meaning which has truth at the back of it, as you know full as well as I can tell you."
"Whether it has or has not, I certainly have no intention of acting on it, and that I tell you plainly. You have, so to speak, surprised a secret which it was my hope to keep from you as much as from the rest of the world; but your having done so constitutes no reason or excuse for any interference on your part between me and matters which concern myself alone."
"Matters which concern yourself alone, Edward! How can that be? The terrible wrong of which John Brancker has been the victim concerns me, as my father's son, at least as much as it does you, and----"
But at this moment the door was opened, and one of the clerks thrust his head into the room.
"Lord Elstree to see you, sir," said the man.
As his lordship entered by one door, Clement made his way out by another.
The mental conflict which he went through in the course of the next few days was something altogether foreign to his experience. He recognized to the full the gravity of the reasons by which his brother had been influenced in acting as he had. In a small town like Ashdown social ostracism, and that of a most bitter and degrading kind, would be the inevitable portion of every member of the Hazeldine family after once the truth should have been avowed. As far as he was concerned, the practice he had got together by such laborious patience would be almost wholly ruined, and he would have to begin life afresh in some far away spot. And, then his mother and sister! To them the blow would be infinitely worse than either to himself or Edward.
On the other hand, the thought of John Brancker slowly wearing out his life under the shadow of a crime which a dozen words from him or his brother would clear away for ever, was altogether intolerable to him. "Right is right, and wrong, wrong all the world over," he said to himself more than once. "There can be no wrong without suffering; but to knowingly let the innocent suffer for the guilty is worse than the commission of the wrong itself."
He arose one morning after a sleepless night. "This shall be put an end to, come what may," he said, grimly, to himself.
As soon as he had finished his morning rounds he went straight to Nairn Cottage. He found John busy in his garden, where much of his time was spent nowadays.
"Can you spare me five minutes here in the summerhouse?" said Clem. "I have something particular to say to you."
"I can spare you the whole day, Mr. Clement, if it comes to that," answered John, with rather a dismal smile. There was an unusual gravity on the young doctor's face which he could not help noticing. He wondered what further bad news he was about to be told.
Clem had found himself unable to fix beforehand on any particular form of words in which to convey to John the startling news he had made up his mind to tell him. It was a terrible confession for a son to have to make, and his heart grew faint within him as he followed John into the summerhouse; but he would not give himself time for further thought, or for any possible turning back from that which he sternly determined on going through with to the bitter end.
Without waiting to sit down, he took one of John's hands in both his, and grasping it very hard he said,
"A communication written by my father on the last day of his life, and addressed to my brother, has come into Edward's hands. In it my father announces his fixed determination to put an end to his existence. It seems that, unknown even to my mother, he had long been suffering from a serious affection of the heart, and had been told by two eminent physicians that, at the most, his life was only worth a few months' purchase. That the knowledge of this fact preyed on his mind cannot be doubted, nor that, in conjunction with certain other circumstances, it led him to take the desperate resolve which resulted in its fatal consummation a few hours after the letter in question was written. Do not ask me to enter into any details--at least, not now. It will be enough if I assure you that both Edward and I are fully agreed that my father's tragic end was due to his own rash act, and that no shadow of blame or suspicion attaches to any other person."
John stood with blanched face and incredulous eyes like one whom some sudden shock has bereft of half his senses. Clem stood with down-dropped eyes, breathing hard and biting his under lip. It was all he could do to crush down the emotion that was battling within him.
"But about the robbery? About the missing money?" queried John at length, in a voice that was hardly more than a whisper.
"Do not ask me--do not ask me!" cried Clem, in tones full of anguish. Dropping John's hand, he turned abruptly away, and seating himself on the bench which ran round three sides of the summerhouse, he rested his elbows on the little table and covered his face with his hands. Convulsive sobs shook his frame from head to foot. John, his eyes streaming with tears, stepped quietly up to him, and laid a hand gently on his shoulder.