When Sir Gilbert Gildersleeve left Spa, he left with a ruddy glow of recovered health on his bronzed red cheek; for in spite of anxiety and repentance and doubt, the man’s iron frame would somehow still assert itself. When he took his seat on the bench in court that morning, he looked so haggard and ill with fatigue and remorse that even Elma Clifford herself pitied him. A hushed whisper ran round among the spectators below that the judge wasn’t fit to try the case before him. And indeed he wasn’t. For it was his own trial, not Guy Waring’s, he was really presiding over.
He sat down in his place, a ghastly picture of pallid despair. The red colour had faded altogether from his wan, white cheeks. His eyes were dreamy and bloodshot with long vigil. His big hands trembled like a woman’s as he opened his note-book. His mouth twitched nervously. So utter a collapse, in such a man as he was, seemed nothing short of pitiable to every spectator.
Counsel for the Crown stared him steadily in the face. Counsel for the Crown—Forbes-Ewing, Q.C.—was an old forensic enemy, who had fought many a hard battle against Gildersleeve, with scant interchange of courtesy, when both were members of the junior Bar together; but now Sir Gilbert’s look moved even HIM to pity. “I think, my lord,” the Q.C. suggested with a sympathetic simper, “your lordship’s too ill to open the court to-day. Perhaps the proceedings had better be adjourned for the present.”
“No, no,” the judge answered, almost testily, shaking his sleeve with impatience. “I’ll have no putting off for trifles in the court where I sit. There’s a capital case to come on this morning. When a man’s neck’s at stake—when a matter of life and death’s at issue—I don’t like to keep any one longer in suspense than I absolutely need. Delay would be cruel.”
As he spoke he lifted his eyes—and caught Elma Clifford’s. The judge let his own drop again in speechless agony. Elma’s never flinched. Neither gave a sign; but Elma knew, as, well as Sir Gilbert knew himself, it was his own life and death the judge was thinking of, and not Guy Waring’s.
“As you will, my lord,” counsel for the Crown responded demurely. “It was your lordship’s convenience we all had at heart, rather than the prisoner’s.”
“Eh! What’s that?” the judge said sharply, with a suspicious frown. Then he recovered himself with a start. For a moment he had half fancied that fellow, Forbes-Ewing, meant SOMETHING by what he said—meant to poke innuendoes at him. But, after all, it was a mere polite form. How frightened we all are, to be sure, when we know we’re on our trial!
The opening formalities were soon got over, and then, amid a deep hush of breathless lips, Guy Waring, of Staple Inn, Holborn, gentleman, was put upon his trial for the wilful murder of Montague Nevitt, eighteen months before, at Mambury in Devon.
Guy, standing in the dock, looked puzzled and distracted rather than alarmed or terrified. His cheek was pale, to be sure, and his eyes were weary; but as Elma glanced from him hastily to the judge on the bench she had no hesitation in settling in her own mind which of the two looked most at that moment like a detected murderer before the faces of his accusers. Guy was calm and self-contained. Sir Gilbert’s mute agony was terrible to behold. Yet, strange to say, no one else in court save Elma seemed to note it as she did. People saw the judge was ill, but that was all. Perhaps his wig and robes helped to hide the effect of conscious guilt—nobody suspects a judge of murder; perhaps all eyes were more intent on the prisoner.
Be that as it might, counsel for the Crown opened with a statement of what they meant to prove, set forth in the familiar forensic fashion. They didn’t pretend the evidence against the accused was absolutely conclusive or overwhelming in character. It was inferential only, but not circumstantial—inferential in such a cumulative and convincing way as could leave no moral doubt on any intelligent mind as to the guilt of the prisoner. They would show that a close intimacy had long existed between the prisoner Waring and the deceased gentleman, Mr. Montague Nevitt. Witnesses would be called who would prove to the court that just before the murder this intimacy, owing to circumstances which could not fully be cleared up, had passed suddenly into intense enmity and open hatred. The landlord of the inn at Mambury, and other persons to be called, would speak to the fact that prisoner had followed his victim in hot blood into Devonshire, and had tracked him to the retreat where he was passing his holiday alone and incognito—had tracked him with every expression of indignant anger, and had uttered plain threats of personal violence towards him.
Nor was that all. It would be shown that on the afternoon of Waring’s visit to Mambury, Mr. Nevitt, who possessed an intense love of nature in her wildest and most romantic moods—it’s always counsel’s cue, for the prosecution, to set the victim’s character in the most amiable light, and so win the sympathy of the jury as against the accused—Mr. Nevitt, that close student of natural beauty, had strolled by himself down a certain woodland path, known as The Tangle, which led through the loneliest and leafiest quarter of Mambury Chase, along the tumbling stream described as the Mam-water. Ten minutes after he had passed the gate, a material witness would show them, the prisoner Waring presented himself, and pointedly asked whether his victim had already gone down the path before him. He was told that that was so. Thereupon the prisoner opened the gate, and followed excitedly. What happened next no living eye but the prisoner’s ever saw. Montague Nevitt was not destined to issue from that wood alive. Two days later his breathless body was found, all stiff and stark, hidden among the brown bracken at the bottom of the dell, where the murderer no doubt had thrust it away out of his sight on that fatal afternoon in fear and trembling.
Half-way through the opening speech Sir Gilbert’s heart beat fast and hard. He had never heard Forbes-Ewing open a case so well. The man would be hanged! He felt sure of it! He could see it! For a while the judge almost gloated over that prospect of release. What was Guy’s life to him now, by the side of his wife’s and Gwendoline’s happiness? But as counsel uttered the words, “What happened next no living eye but the prisoner’s ever saw,” he looked hard at Guy. Not a quiver of remorse or of guilty knowledge passed over the young man’s face. But Elma Clifford, for her part, looked at the judge on the bench. Their eyes met once more. Again Sir Gilbert’s fell. Oh, heavens! how terrible! Even for Gwendoline’s sake he could never stand this appalling suspense. But perhaps after all the prosecution might fail. There was still a chance left that the jury might acquit him.
So, torn by conflicting emotions, he sat there still, stiff and motionless in his seat as an Egyptian statue.
Then counsel went on to deal in greater detail with the question of motive. There were two motives the prosecution proposed to allege: first, the known enmity of recent date between the two parties, believed to have reference to some business dispute; and, secondly—here counsel dropped his voice to a very low key—he was sorry to suggest it; but the evidence bore it out—mere vulgar love of gain—the commonplace thirst after filthy lucre. They would bring witnesses to show that when Mr. Montague Nevitt was last seen alive, he was in possession of a pocket-book containing a very large large sum in Bank of England notes of high value; from the moment of his death that pocket-book had disappeared, and nobody knew what had since become of it. It was not upon the body when the body was found. And all their efforts to trace the missing notes, whose numbers were not known, had been unhappily unsuccessful.
Guy listened to all this impeachment in a dazed, dreamy way. He hardly knew what it meant. It appalled and chilled him. The web of circumstances was too thick for him to break. He couldn’t understand it himself. And what was far worse, he could give no active assistance to his own lawyers on the question of the notes—which might be very important evidence against him—without further prejudicing his case by confessing the forgery. At all hazards, he was determined to keep that quiet now. Cyril had never spoken to a soul of that episode, and to speak of it, as things stood, would have been certain death to him. I would be to supply the one missing link of motive which the prosecution needed to complete their chain of cumulative evidence.
It was some comfort to him to think, however, that the secret was safe in Cyril’s keeping. Cyril had all the remaining notes, still unchanged, in his possession; and the prosecution, knowing nothing of the forgery, or its sequel, had no clue at all as to where they came from.
But as for Sir Gilbert, he listened still with ever-deepening horror. His mind swayed to and fro between hope and remorse. They were making the man guilty, and Gwendoline would be saved! They were making the man guilty, and a gross wrong would be perpetrated! Great drops of sweat stood colder than ever on his burning brow. He couldn’t have believed Forbes-Ewing could have done it so well. He was weaving a close web round an innocent man with consummate forensic skill and cunning.
The case went on to its second stage. Witnesses were called, and Guy listened to them dreamily. All of them bore out counsel’s opening statement. Every man in court felt the evidence was going very hard against the prisoner. They’d caught the right man, that was clear—so the spectators opined. They’d proved it to the hilt. This fellow would swing for it.
At last the landlord of the Talbot Arms at Mambury shuffled slowly into the witness-box. He was a heavy, dull man, and he gave evidence as to Nevitt’s stay under an assumed name—which counsel explained suggestively by the deceased gentleman’s profound love of retirement—and as to Guy’s angry remarks and evident indignation. But the most sensational part of all his evidence was that which related to the pocket-book Montague Nevitt was carrying at the time of his death, containing notes, he should say, for several hundred-pounds, “or it murt be thousands—and yet, again, it mustn’t,” which had totally disappeared since the day of the murder. Diligent search had been made for the pocket-book everywhere by the landlord and the police, but it had vanished into space, “leaving not a wrack behind,” as junior counsel for the prosecution poetically phrased it.
At the words Cyril mechanically dived his hand into his pocket, as he had done a hundred times a day before, during these last eighteen months, to assure himself that that most incriminating and unwelcome object was still safely ensconced in its usual resting-place. Yes, there it was sure enough, as snug as ever! He sighed, and pulled his hand out again nervously, with a little jerk. Something came with it, that fell on the floor with a jingle by his neighbour’s feet. Cyril turned crimson, then deadly pale. He snatched at the object; but his neighbour picked it up and examined it cursorily. Its flap had burst open with the force of the fall, and on the inside the finder read with astonishment, in very plain letters, the very name of the murdered man, “Montague Nevitt.”
Cyril held out his hand to recover it impatiently. But the finder was too much taken back at his strange discovery to part with it so readily. It was full of money-Bank of England notes; and through the transparent paper of the outermost among them the finder could dimly read the words, “One hundred.”
He rose in his place, and held the pocket-book aloft in his hand with a triumphant gesture. Cyril tried in vain to clutch at it. The witness turned round sharply, disturbed by this incident. “What’s that?” the judge exclaimed, puckering his brows in disapprobation, and looking angrily towards the disturber.
“If you please, my lord,” the innkeeper answered, letting his jaw drop slowly in almost speechless amazement, “that’s the thing I was a-talking of: that’s Mr. Nevitt’s pocket-book.”
“Hand it up,” the judge said shortly, gazing hard with all his eyes at the mute evidence so tendered.
The finder handed it up without note or comment.
Sir Gilbert turned the book over in blank surprise. He was dumfoundered himself. For a minute or two he examined it carefully, inside and out. Yes; there was no mistake. It was really what they called it. “Montague Nevitt” was written in plain letters on the leather flap; within lay half-a-dozen engraved visiting-cards, a Foreign Office passport in Nevitt’s name, and thirty Bank of England notes for one hundred pounds apiece. This was, indeed, a mystery!
“Where did it come from?” the judge asked, drawing a painfully deep breath, and handing it across to the jury.
And the finder answered, “If you please, my lord, the gentleman next to me pulled it out of his pocket.”
“Who is he?” the judge inquired, with a sinking heart, for he himself knew perfectly well who was the unhappy possessor.
And a thrill of horror ran round the crowded court as Forbes-Ewing answered, in a very distinct voice, “Mr. Cyril Waring, my lord, the brother of the prisoner.”
Cyril felt all was up. Elma glanced at him trembling. This was horrible, inconceivable, inexplicable, fatal. The very stars in their courses seem to fight against Guy. Blind chance checkmated them. No hope was left now, save in Gilbert Gildersleeve’s own sense of justice.
But Sir Gilbert Gildersleeve sat there, transfixed with horror. No answering gleam now shot through his dull, glazed eye. For he alone knew that whatever made the case against the prisoner look worse, made his own position each moment more awful and more intolerable.
Through the rest of the case, Cyril sat in his place like a stone figure. Counsel for the Crown generously abstained from putting him into the witness-box to give testimony against his brother. Or rather, they thought the facts themselves, as they had just come out in court, more telling for the jury than any formal evidence. The only other witness of importance was, therefore, the lad who had sat on the gate by the entrance to The Tangle. As he scrambled into the box Sir Gilbert’s anxiety grew visibly deeper and more acute than ever. For the boy was the one person who had seen him at Mambury on the day of the murder; and on the boy depended his sole chance of being recognised. At Tavistock, eighteen months before, Sir Gilbert had left the cross-examination of this witness in the hands of a junior, and the boy hadn’t noticed him, sitting down among the Bar with gown and wig on. But to-day, it was impossible the boy shouldn’t see him; and if the boy should recognise him—why, then, Heaven help him.
The lad gave his evidence-in-chief with great care and deliberateness. He swore positively to Guy, and wasn’t for a moment to be shaken in cross-examination. He admitted he had been mistaken at Tavistock, and confused the prisoner with Cyril—when he saw one of them apart—but now that he saw ‘em both together before his eyes at once, why, he could take his solemn oath as sure as fate upon him. Guy’s counsel failed utterly to elicit anything of importance, except—and here Sir Gilbert’s face grew whiter than ever—except that another gentleman whom the lad didn’t know had asked at the gate about the path, and gone round the other way as if to meet Mr. Nevitt.
“What sort of a gentleman?” the cross-examiner inquired, clutching at this last straw as a mere chance diversion.
“Well, a vurry big zart o’ a gentleman,” witness answered, unabashed. “A vine vigger o’ a man. Jest such another as thik ‘un with the wig ther.”
As he spoke he stared hard at the judge, a good scrutinizing stare. Sir Gilbert quailed, and glanced instinctively, first at the boy, and then at Elma. Not a spark of intelligence shone in the lad’s stolid eyes. But Elma’s were fixed upon him with a serpentine glare of awful fascination. “Thou art the man,” they seemed to say to him mutely. Sir Gilbert, in his awe, was afraid to look at them. They made him wild with terror, yet they somehow fixed him. Try as he would to keep his own from meeting them, they attracted him irresistibly.
A ripple, of faint laughter ran lightly through the court at the undisguised frankness of the boy’s reply. The judge repressed it sternly.
“Oh, he was just such another one as his lordship, was he?” counsel repeated, pressing the lad hard. “Now, are you quite sure you remember all the people you saw that day? Are you quite sure the other man who asked about passers-by wasn’t—for example—the judge himself who’s sitting here?”
Sir Gilbert glanced up with a quick, suspicious air. It was only a shot at random—the common advocate’s trick in trying to confuse a witness over questions of identity; but to Sir Gilbert, under the circumstances, it was inexpressibly distressing. “Well, it murt ‘a been he,” the lad answered, putting his head on one side, and surveying the judge closely with prolonged attention. “Thik un ‘ad just such another pair o’ ‘ands as his lordship do ‘ave. It murt ‘a been his lordship ‘urself as is zitting there.”
“This goes quite beyond the bounds of decency,” Sir Gilbert murmured faintly, with a vain endeavour to hold his hands on the desk in an unconcerned attitude. “Have the kindness, Mr. Walters, to spare the Bench. Attend to your examination. Observations of that sort are wholly uncalled for.”
But the boy, once started, was not so easily repressed. “Why, it was his lordship,” he went on, scanning the judge still harder. “I do mind his vurry voice. It was ‘im, no doubt about it. I’ve zeed a zight o’ people, since I zeed ‘im that day, but I do mind his voice, and I do mind his ‘ands, and I do mind his ve-ace the zame as if it wur yesterday. Now I come to look, blessed if it wasn’t his lordship!”
Guy’s counsel smiled a triumphant smile. He had carried his point. He had confused the witness. This showed how little reliance could be placed upon the boy’s evidence as to personal identity! He’d identify anybody who happened to be suggested to him! But Sir Gilbert’s face grew yet more deadly pale. For he saw at a glance this was no accident or mistake; the boy really remembered him! And Elma’s steadfast eyes looked him through and through, with that irresistible appeal, still more earnestly than ever.
Sir Gilbert breathed again. He had been recognised to no purpose. Even this positive identification fell flat upon everybody.
At last the examination and cross-examination were finished, and Guy’s counsel began his hopeless task of unravelling this tangled mass of suggestion and coincidence. He had no witnesses to call; the very nature of the case precluded that. All he could do was to cavil over details, to point out possible alternatives, to lay stress upon the absence of direct evidence, and to ask that the jury should give the prisoner the benefit of the doubt, if any doubt at all existed in their minds as to his guilt or innocence. Counsel had meant when he first undertook the case to lay great stress also on the presumed absence of motive; but, after the fatal accident which resulted in the disclosure of Montague Nevitt’s pocket-book, any argument on that score would have been worse than useless. Counsel elected rather to pass the episode by in discreet silence, and to risk everything on the uncertainty of the actual encounter.
At last he sat down, wiping his brow in despair, after what he felt himself to be a most feeble performance.
Then Sir Gilbert began, and in a very tremulous and failing voice summed briefly up the whole of the evidence.
Men who remember Gildersleeve’s old blustering manner stood aghast at the timidity with which the famous lawyer delivered himself on this, the first capital charge ever brought before him. He reminded the jury, in very solemn and almost warning tones, that where a human life was at stake, mere presumptive evidence should always carry very little weight with it. And the evidence here was all purely presumptive. The prosecution had shown nothing more than a physical possibility that the prisoner at the bar might have committed the murder. There was evidence of animus, it was true; but that evidence was weak; there was partial identification; but that identification lay open to the serious objection that all the persons who now swore to Guy Waring’s personality had sworn just as surely and confidently before to his brother Cyril’s. On the whole, the judge summed up strongly in Guy’s favour. He wiped his clammy brow and looked appealingly at the bar. As the jury would hope for justice themselves, let them remember to mete out nothing but strict justice to the accused person who now stood trembling in the dock before them.
All the court stood astonished. Could this be Gildersleeve? Atkins would never have summed up like that. Atkins would have gone in point-blank for hanging him. And everybody thought Gildersleeve would hang with the best. Nobody had suspected him till then of any womanly weakness about capital punishment. There was a solemn hush as the judge ended. Then everybody saw the unhappy man was seriously ill. Great streams of sweat trickled slowly down his brow. His eyes stared in front of him. His mouth twitched horribly. He looked like a person on the point of apoplexy. The prisoner at the bar gazed hard at him and pitied him.
“He’s dying himself, and he wants to go out with a clear conscience at last,” some one suggested in a low voice at the barristers’ table. The explanation served. It was whispered round the court in a hushed undertone that the judge to-day was on his very last legs, and had summed up accordingly. Late in life, he had learned to show mercy, as he hoped for it.
There was a deadly pause. The jury retired to consider their verdict. Two men remained behind in court, waiting breathless for their return. Two lives hung at issue in the balance while the jury deliberated. Elma Clifford, glancing with a terrified eye from one to the other, could hardly help pitying the guiltiest most. His look of mute suffering was so inexpressibly pathetic.
The twelve good men and true were gone for a full half-hour. Why, nobody knew. The case was as plain as a pikestaff, gossipers said in court. If he had been caught red-handed, he’d have been hanged without remorse. It was only the eighteen months and the South African episode that could make the jury hesitate for one moment about hanging him.
At last, a sound, a thrill, a movement by the door. Every eye was strained forward. The jury trooped back again. They took their places in silence. Sir Gilbert scanned their faces with an agonized look. It was a moment of ghastly and painful suspense. He was waiting for their verdict—on himself, and Guy Waring.
Only two people in court doubted for one moment what the verdict would be. And those two were the pair who stood there on their trial. Sir Gilbert couldn’t believe the jury would convict an innocent man of the crime he himself had half unwittingly committed. Guy Waring couldn’t believe the jury would convict an innocent man of the crime he had never been guilty of. So those two doubted. To all the rest the verdict was a foregone conclusion.
Nevertheless, dead silence reigned everywhere in the court as the clerk of arraigns put the solemn question, “Gentlemen, do you find the prisoner at the bar guilty or not guilty?”
And the foreman, clearing his throat huskily, answered in a very tremulous tone, “We find him guilty of wilful murder.”
There was a long, deep pause. Every one looked at the prisoner. Guy Waring stood like one stunned by the immensity of the blow. It was an awful moment. He knew he was innocent; but he knew now the English law would hang him.
One pair of eyes in the court, however, was not fixed on Guy. Elma Clifford, at that final and supreme moment, gazed hard with all her soul at Sir Gilbert Gildersleeve. Her glance went through him. She sat like an embodied conscience before him. The judge rose slowly, his eyes riveted on hers. He was trembling with remorse, and deadlier pale than ever. An awful lividness stole over his face. His lips were contorted. His eyebrows quivered horribly. Still gazing straight at Elma, he essayed to speak. Twice he opened his parched lips. Then his voice failed him.
“I cannot accept that finding,” he said at last, in a very solemn tone, battling hard for speech against some internal enemy. “I cannot accept it. Clerk, you will enter a verdict of not guilty.”
A deep hum of surprise ran round the expectant court. Every mouth opened wide, and drew a long hushed breath. Senior counsel for the Crown jumped to his feet astonished. “But why, my lord?” he asked tartly, thus baulked of his success. “On what ground does your lordship decide to override the plain verdict of the jury?”
The pause that followed was inexpressibly terrible. Guy Waring waited for the answer in an agony of suspense. He knew what it meant now. With a rush it all occurred to him. He knew who was the murderer. But he hoped for nothing. Sir Gilbert faltered: Elma Clifford’s eyes were upon him still, compelling him. “Because,” he said at last, with a still more evident and physical effort, pumping the words out slowly, “I am here to administer justice, and justice I will administer.... This man is innocent. It was I myself who killed Montague Nevitt that day at Mambury.”
At those awful words, uttered in a tone so solemn that no one could doubt either their truth or their sincerity, a cold thrill ran responsive through the packed crowd of auditors. The silence was profound. In its midst, a boy’s voice burst forth all at once, directed, as it seemed, to the counsel for the Crown, “I said it was him,” the voice cried, in a triumphant tone. “I knowed ‘um! I knowed ‘um! Thik there’s the man that axed me the way down the dell the marnin’ o’ the murder.”
The judge turned towards the boy with a ghastly smile of enforced recognition. “You say the truth, my lad,” he answered, without any attempt at concealment. “It was I who asked you. It was I who killed him. I went round by the far gate after hearing he was there, and, cutting across the wood, I met Montague Nevitt in the path by The Tangle. I went there to meet him; I went there to confront him; but not of malice prepense to murder him. I wanted to question him about a family matter. Why I needed to question him no one henceforth shall ever know. That secret, thank Heaven, rests now in Montague Nevitt’s grave. But when I did question him, he answered me back with so foul an aspersion upon a lady who was very near and dear to me”—the judge paused a moment; he was fighting hard for breath; something within was evidently choking him. Then he went on more excitedly—“an aspersion upon a lady whom I love more than life—an insult that no man could stand—an unspeakable foulness; and I sprang at him, the cur, in the white heat of my anger, not meaning or dreaming to hurt him seriously. I caught him by the throat.” The judge held up his hands before the whole court appealingly. “Look at those hands, gentlemen,” he cried, turning them about. “How could I ever know how hard and how strong they were? I only seemed to touch him. I just pushed him from my path. He fell at once at my feet—dead, dead unexpectedly. Remember how it all came about. The medical evidence showed his heart was weak, and he died in the scuffle. How was I to know all that? I only knew this—he fell dead before me.”
With a face of speechless awe, he paused and wiped his brow. Not a soul in court moved or breathed above a whisper. It was evident the judge was in a paroxysm of contrition. His face was drawn up. His whole frame quivered visibly. Even Elma pitied him.
“And then I did a grievous wrong,” the judge continued once more, his voice now very thick and growing rapidly thicker. “I did a grievous wrong, for which here to-day, before all this court, I humbly ask Guy Waring’s pardon. I had killed Montague Nevitt, unintentionally, unwittingly, accidentally almost, in a moment of anger, never knowing I was killing him. And if he had been a stronger or a healthier man, what little I did to him would never have killed him. I didn’t mean to murder him. For that my remorse is far less poignant. But what I did after was far worse than the murder. I behaved like a sneak—I behaved like a coward. I saw suspicion was aroused against the prisoner, Guy Waring. And what did I do then? Instead of coming forward like a man, as I ought, and saying ‘I did it,’ and standing my trial on the charge of manslaughter, I did my best to throw further suspicion on an innocent person. I made the case look blacker and worse for Guy Waring. I don’t condone my own crime. I did it for my wife’s sake and my daughter’s, I admit—but I regret it now bitterly—and am I not atoning for it? With a great humiliation, am I not amply atoning for it? I wrote an unsigned letter warning Waring at once to fly the country, as a warrant was out against him. Waring foolishly took my advice, and fled forthwith. From that day to this”—he gazed round him appealingly—“oh, friends, I have never known one happy moment.”
Guy gazed at him from the dock, where he still stood guarded by two strong policemen, and felt a fresh light break suddenly in upon him. Their positions now were almost reversed. It was he who was the accuser, and Sir Gilbert Gildersleeve, the judge in that court, who stood charged to-day on his own confession with causing the death of Montague Nevitt.
“Then it was YOU” Guy said slowly, breaking the pause at last, “who sent me that anonymous letter at Plymouth?”
“It was I,” the judge answered, in an almost inaudible, gurgling tone. “It was I who so wronged you. Can you ever forgive me for it?”
Guy gazed at him fixedly. He himself had suffered much. Cyril and Elma had suffered still more. But the judge, he felt sure, had suffered most of all of them. In this moment of relief, this moment of vindication, this moment of triumph, he could afford to be generous. “Sir Gilbert Gildersleeve, I forgive you,” he answered slowly.
The judge gazed around him with a vacant stare. “I feel cold,” he said, shivering; “very cold, very faint, too. But I’ve made all right HERE,” and he held out a document. “I wrote this paper in my room last night—in case of accident—confessing everything. I brought it down here, signed and witnessed, unread, intending to read it out if the verdict went against me—I mean, against Waring.... But I feel too weak now to read anything further.... I’m so cold, so cold. Take the paper, Forbes-Ewing. It’s all in your line. You’ll know what to do with it.” He could hardly utter a word, breath failed him so fast. “This thing has killed me,” he went on, mumbling. “I deserved it. I deserved it.”
“How about the prisoner?” the authority from the gaol asked, as the judge collapsed rather than sat down on the bench again.
Those words roused Sir Gilbert to full consciousness once more. The judge rose again, solemnly, in all the majesty of his ermine. “The prisoner is discharged,” he said, in a loud, clear voice. “I am here to do justice—justice against myself. I enter a verdict of not guilty.” Then he turned to the polices “I am your prisoner,” he went on, in a broken, rambling way. “I give myself in charge for the manslaughter of Montague Nevitt. Manslaughter, not murder. Though I don’t even admit myself, indeed, it was anything more than justifiable homicide.”
He sank back again once more, and murmured three times in his seat, as if to himself, “Justifiable homicide! Justifiable homicide! Just—ifiable homicide!”
Somebody rose in court as he sank, and moved quickly towards him. The judge recognised him at once.
“Granville Kelmscott,” he said; in a weary voice, “help me out of this. I am very, very ill. You’re a friend. I’m dying. Give me your arm! Assist me!”
Granville helped him on his arm into the judge’s room amid profound silence. All the court was deeply stirred. A few personal friends hurried after him eagerly. Among them were the Warings, and Mrs. Clifford, and Elma.
The judge staggered to a seat, and held Granville’s hand long and silently in his. Then his eye caught Elma’s. He turned to her gratefully. “Thank you, young lady,” he said, in a very thick voice. “You were extremely good. I forget your name. But you helped me greatly.”
There was such a pathetic ring in those significant words, “I forget your name,” that every eye about stood dimmed with moisture. Remorse had clearly blotted out all else now from Sir Gilbert Gildersleeve’s powerful brain save the solitary memory of his great wrong-doing.
“Something’s upon his mind still,” Elma cried, looking hard at him. “He’s dying! he’s dying! But he wants to say something else before he dies, I’m certain. ... Mr. Kelmscott, it’s to you. Oh, Cyril, stand back! Mother, leave them alone! I’m sure from his eye he wants to say something to Mr. Kelmscott.”
They all fell back reverently. They stood in the presence of death and of a mighty sorrow. Sir Gilbert still held Granville’s hand fast bound in his own. “It’ll kill her,” he muttered. “It’ll kill her! I’m sure it’ll kill her! She’ll never get over the thought that her father was—was the cause of Montague Nevitt’s death. And you’ll never care to marry a girl of whom people will say, either justly or unjustly, ‘She’s a murderers daughter’.... And that will kill her, too. For, Kelmscott, she loved you!”
Granville held the dying man’s hand still more gently than ever. “Sir Gilbert,” he said, leaning over him with very tender eyes, “no event on earth could ever possibly alter Gwendoline’s love for me, or my love for Gwendoline. I know you can’t live. This shock has been too much for you. But if it will make you die any the happier now to know that Gwendoline and I will still be one, I give you my sacred promise at this solemn moment, that as soon as she likes I will marry Gwendoline.” He paused for a second. “I don’t understand all this story just yet,” he went on. “But of one thing I’m certain. The sympathy of every soul in court to-day went with you as you spoke out the truth so manfully. The sympathy of all England will go with you to-morrow when they come to learn of it.... Sir Gilbert, till this morning I never admired you, much as I love Gwendoline. As you made that confession just now in court, I declare, I admired you. With all the greater confidence now will I marry your daughter.”
They carried him to the judge’s lodgings in the town, and laid him there peaceably for the doctors to tend him. For a fortnight the shadow of Gildersleeve still lingered on, growing feebler and feebler in intellect every day. But the end was certain. It was softening of the brain, and it proceeded rapidly. The horror of that unspeakable trial had wholly unnerved him. The great, strong man cried and sobbed like a baby. Lady Gildersleeve and Gwendoline were with him all through. He seldom spoke. When he did, it was generally to murmur those fixed words of exculpation, in a tremulous undertone, “It was my hands that did it—these great, clumsy hands of mine—not I—not I. I never, never meant it. It was an accident. An accident. Justifiable homicide.... What I really regret is for that poor fellow Waring.”
And at the end of a fortnight he died, once smiling, with Gwendoline’s hand locked tight in his own, and Granville Kelmscott kneeling in tears by his bedside.
The Kelmscott property was settled by arrangement. It never came into court. With the aid of the family lawyers the three half-brothers divided it amicably. Guy wouldn’t hear of Granville’s giving up his claim to the house and park at Tilgate. Granville was to the manner born, he said, and brought up to expect it; while Cyril and he, mere waifs and strays in the world, would be much better off, even so, with their third of the property each, than they ever before in their lives could have counted upon. As for Cyril, he was too happy in Guy’s exculpation from the greater crime, and his frank explanation of the lesser—under Nevitt’s influence—to care very much in his own heart what became of Tilgate.
The only one man who objected to this arrangement was Mr. Reginald Clifford, C.M.G., of Craighton. The Companion of the Militant Saints was strongly of opinion that Cyril Waring oughtn’t to have given up his prior claim to the family mansion, even for valuable consideration elsewhere. Mr. Clifford drew himself up to the full height of his spare figure, and caught in the tight skin of his mummy-like face rather tighter than before, as he delivered himself of this profound opinion. “A man should consult his own dignity,” he said stiffly, and with great precision; “if he’s born to assume a position in the county, he should assume that position as a sacred duty. He should remember that his wife and children—”
“But he hasn’t got any wife, papa,” Elma ventured to interpose, with a bright little smile; “so THAT can’t count either way.”
“He hasn’t a wife AT PRESENT, to be sure; that’s perfectly true, my dear; no wife AT PRESENT; but he will probably now, in his existing circumstances, soon obtain one. A Man of Property should always marry. Mr. Waring will naturally desire to ally himself to some family of Good Position in the county; and the lady’s relations would, of course, insist—”
“Well, it doesn’t matter to us, papa,” Elma answered maliciously; “for, as far as we’re concerned, you know; you’ve often said that nothing on earth would ever induce you to give your consent.”
The Gentleman of Good Position in the county gazed at his daughter aghast with horror. “My dear child,” he said, with positive alarm, “your remarks are nothing short of Revolutionary. You must remember that since then circumstances have altered. At that time, Mr. Waring was a painter—”
“He’s a painter still, I believe,” Elma put in, parenthetically. “The acquisition of property or county rank doesn’t seem to have had the very slightest effect one way or the other upon his drawing or his colouring.”
Her father disdained to take notice of such flippant remarks. “At that time,” he repeated solemnly, “Mr. Waring was a painter, a mere ordinary painter; we know him now to be the heir and representative of a great County Family. If he were to ask you to-day—”
“But he did ask me a long time ago, you know, papa,” Elma put in demurely. “And at that time, you remember, you objected to the match; so of course, as in duty bound, I at once refused him.”
“And what did your father say to that, Elma?” Cyril asked, with a smile, as she narrated the whole circumstances to him some hours later.
“Oh, he only said, ‘But he’ll ask you again now, you may be sure, my child.’ And I replied very gravely, I didn’t think you would. And do you know, Cyril, I really don’t think you will, either.”
“Why not, Elma?”
“Because, you foolish boy, it isn’t the least bit in the world necessary. This has been, all through, a comedy of errors. Tragedy enough intermixed; but still a comedy of errors. There never was really any reason on earth why either of us shouldn’t have married the other. And the only thing I now regret myself is that I didn’t do as I first threatened, and marry you outright, just to show my confidence in you and Guy, at the time when everybody else had turned most against you.”
“Well, suppose we make up for lost time now by saying Wednesday fortnight,” Cyril suggested, after a short pause, during which both of them simultaneously had been otherwise occupied.
“Oh, Cyril, that’s awfully quick! It could hardly be managed. There’s the dresses, and all that! And the bridesmaids to arrange about! And the invitations to issue!... But still, sooner than put you off any longer now—well, yes, my dear boy—I dare say we could make it Wednesday fortnight.”