Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  Mr. Dare was stopped by more screams. Whilst he was preventing immediate terror to his wife and daughter, the lady’s maid, her curiosity excited beyond repression, had slipped into the dining-room, and peeped over Joseph’s shoulder. What she had expected to see she perhaps could not have stated; what she did see was so far worse than her wildest fears, that she lost sense of everything, except the moment’s fear; and shriek after shriek echoed from her.

  A scene of confusion ensued. Mrs. Dare tried to force her way to the room; Adelaide followed her; Betsy began bewailing Mr. Anthony, by name, in wild words. And the sleepers, above, came flocking out of their chambers, with trembling limbs and white faces.

  Mr. Dare put his back against the dining-room door. “Girls, go back! Julia, go back, for the love of Heaven! Mademoiselle, is that you? Be so good as to stay where you are, and keep Rosa and Minny with you.”

  “Mais, qu’est-ce que c’est, donc?” exclaimed mademoiselle, speaking, in her wonder, in her most familiar tongue, and, truth to say, paying little heed to Mr. Dare’s injunction. “Y a-t-il du malheur arrivé?”

  Betsy went up to her. Betsy recognised her as one not of the family, to whom she could ease her overflowing mind. The same thought had occurred to Betsy as to Joseph. “Poor Mr. Anthony’s lying in there dead, mamzel,” she whispered. “Mr. Herbert must have killed him.”

  Unheeding the request of Mr. Dare, unmindful of the deficiences or want of elegance in her costume, which consisted of what she called a peignoir, and a borderless calico nightcap, mademoiselle flew down to the hall and slipped into the dining-room. Some of the others slipped in also, and a sad scene ensued. What with wife, governess, servants, and children, Mr. Dare was powerless to end it. Mademoiselle went straight up, gave one look, and staggered back against the wall.

  “C’est vrai!” she muttered. “C’est Monsieur Anthony.”

  “It is Anthony,” shivered Mr. Dare, “I fear — I fear violence has been done him.”

  The governess was breathing heavily. She looked quite as ghastly as did that up-turned face. “But why should it be?” she asked, in English. “Who has done it?”

  Ah, who had done it! Joseph’s frightened face seemed to say that he could tell if he dared, Cyril bounded into the room, and clasped one of the arms. But he let it fall again. “It is rigid!” he gasped. “Is he dead? Father! he can’t be dead!”

  Mr. Dare hurried Joseph from the room — hurried him across the hall to the door. He, Mr. Dare, seemed so agitated as scarcely to know what he was about. “Make all haste,” he said; “the nearest surgeon.”

  “Sir,” whispered Joseph, turning when he was outside the door, his agitation as great as his master’s: “I’m afraid it’s Mr. Herbert who has done this.”

  “Why?” sharply asked Mr. Dare.

  “They had a dreadful quarrel this evening, sir, after you left. Mr. Herbert drew a knife upon his brother. I got in just in time to stop bloodshed, or it might have happened then.”

  Mr. Dare suppressed a groan. “Go off, Joseph, and bring a doctor here. He may not be past reviving, Milbank is the nearest. If he is at home, bring him; if not, get anybody.”

  Joseph, without his hat, sped across the lawn, and gained the entrance gate at the very moment that a gig was passing. By the light of a lamp, Joseph saw that it contained Mr. Glenn, the surgeon, driven by his servant. He had been on a late professional visit into the country. Joseph shouted running before the horse in his excitement, and the man pulled up.

  “What’s the matter, Joseph?” asked Mr. Glenn. “Any one ill?”

  Somewhat curious to say, Mr. Glenn was the usual medical attendant of the Dares. Joseph explained as well as he could. Mr. Anthony had been found lying on the dining-room carpet, to all appearance dead. Mr. Glenn descended.

  “Anything up at your place?” asked a policeman, who had just come by, on his beat.

  “I should think there is,” returned Joseph. “One of the gentlemen’s been found dead.”

  “Dead!” echoed the policeman. “Which of them is it?” he asked, after a pause.

  “Mr. Anthony.”

  “Why, I saw him turn in here about half-past eleven!” observed the officer, “He is in a fit, perhaps.”

  “Why do you say that?” asked Joseph.

  “Because he had been taking a drop too much. He could hardly walk. Somebody brought him as far as the gate.”

  Mr. Glenn had hastened on. The policeman followed with Joseph. Followed, possibly, to gratify his curiosity; possibly, because he thought his services might be in some way required. When the two entered the dining-room, Mr. Glenn was kneeling down to examine Anthony, and sounds of distress came on their ears from a distance. They were caused by the hysterics of Mrs. Dare.

  “Is he dead, sir?” asked the policeman, in a low tone.

  “He has been dead these two or three hours,” was Mr. Glenn’s reply.

  But it was not a fit. It was not anything so innocent. Mr. Glenn found that the cause of death was a stab in the side. Death, he believed, must have been instantaneous: and the hemorrhage was chiefly internal. There were very few stains on the clothes.

  “What’s this!” cried Mr. Glenn.

  He was pulling at some large substance on which Anthony had fallen. It proved to be a cloak. Cyril — and some others present — recognised it as Herbert’s cloak. Where was Herbert? In bed? Was it possible that he could sleep through the noise and confusion that the house was in?

  “Can nothing be done?” asked Mr. Dare of the surgeon.

  Mr. Glenn shook his head. “He is stone dead, you see; dead, and nearly cold. He must have been dead more than two hours. I should say nearer three.”

  From two to three hours! Then that would bring the time of his death to about half-past eleven o’clock; close upon the time that the policeman saw him returning home. Some one turned to ask the policeman a question, but he had disappeared. Mr. Glenn went to see what he could do for Mrs. Dare, whose cries had been painful to hear, and Mr. Dare drew Joseph aside. Somehow he felt that he dared not question him in the presence of witnesses, lest any condemnatory fact should transpire to bring the guilt home to his second son. In spite of the sight of Anthony lying dead before him, in spite of what he had heard of the quarrel, he could not bring his mind to believe that Herbert had been guilty of this most dastardly deed.

  “What time did you let him in?” asked Mr. Dare, pointing to his ill-fated son.

  Joseph answered evasively. “The policeman said it was about half after eleven, sir.”

  “And what time did Mr. Herbert come home?”

  In point of fact, but for seeing the cloak where he did see it, Joseph would not have known whether Mr. Herbert was at home yet. He felt there was nothing for it but to tell the simple truth to Mr. Dare — that the gentlemen had been in the habit of letting themselves in at any hour they pleased, the dining-room window being left unfastened for them. Joseph made the admission, and Mr. Dare received it with anger.

  “I did it by their orders, sir,” the man said, with deprecation. “If you think it was wrong, perhaps you’ll put things on a better footing for the future. But, to wait up every night till its pretty near time to rise again, is what I can’t do, or anybody else. Flesh and blood is but mortal, sir, and couldn’t stand it.”

  “But you were not kept up like that?” cried Mr. Dare.

  “Yes, sir, I was. If one of the gentlemen wasn’t out, the other would be. I told them it was impossible I could be up nearly all night and every night, and rise in the morning just the same, and do my work in the day. So they took to have the dining-room window left open, and came in that way, and I went to rest at my proper hour. Mr. Cyril and Mr. George, too, they are taking to stay out.”

  “The house might have been robbed over and over again!” exclaimed Mr. Dare.

  “I told them so, sir. But they laughed at me. They said who’d be likely to come through the grounds and up to the windows and try them? At any rate, sir,” added Joseph
, as a last excuse, “they ordered it done. And that’s how it is, sir, that I don’t know what time either Mr. Anthony or Mr. Herbert came in last night.”

  Mr. Dare said no more. The fruits of the way in which his sons had been reared were coming heavily home to him. He turned to go upstairs to Herbert’s chamber. On the bottom stairs, swaying herself to and fro in her peignoir, a staring print, all the colours of the rainbow, sat the governess. She lifted her white face as Mr. Dare approached.

  “Is he dead?”

  Mr. Dare shook his head. “The surgeon says he has been dead ever since the beginning of the night.”

  “And Monsieur Herbert? Is he dead?”

  “He dead!” repeated Mr. Dare in an accent of alarm, fearing possibly she might have a motive for the question. “What should bring him also dead? Mademoiselle, why do you ask it?”

  “Eh, me, I don’t know,” she answered. “I am bewildered with it all. Why should he be dead, and not the other? Why should either be dead?”

  Mr. Dare saw that she did look bewildered; scarcely in her senses. She had a white handkerchief in her hand, and was wiping the moisture from her scarcely less white face. “Did you witness the quarrel between them?” he inquired, supposing that she had done so by her words.

  “If I did, I not tell,” she vehemently answered, her English less clear than usual. “If Joseph say — I hear him say it to you just now — that Monsieur Herbert took a knife to his brother, I not give testimony to it. What affair is it of mine, that I should tell against one or the other? Who did it? — who killed him?” — she rapidly continued. “It was not Monsieur Herbert. No, I will say always that it was not Monsieur Herbert. He would not kill his brother.”

  “I do not think he would,” earnestly spoke Mr. Dare.

  “No, no, no!” said mademoiselle, her voice rising with her emphasis. “He never kill his brother; he not enough méchant for that.”

  “Perhaps he has not come in?” cried Mr. Dare, catching at the thought.

  Betsy Garter answered the words. She had stolen up in the general restlessness, and halted there. “He must be come in, sir,” she said; “else how could his cloak be in the dining-room? They are saying that it’s Mr. Herbert’s cloak which was under Mr. Anthony.”

  “What has Mr. Herbert’s cloak to do with his coming in or not coming in?” sharply asked Mr. Dare. “He would not be wearing his cloak this weather.”

  “But he does wear it, sir,” returned Betsy. “He went out in it to-night.”

  “Did you see him?” sternly asked Mr. Dare.

  “If I hadn’t seen him, I couldn’t have told that he went out in it,” independently replied Betsy, who, like her mother, was fond of maintaining her own opinion. “I was looking out of the window in Miss Adelaide’s room, and I saw Mr. Herbert go out by way of the dining-room window towards the entrance-gate.”

  “Wearing his cloak?”

  “Wearing his cloak,” assented Betsy, “I hoped he was hot enough in it.”

  The words seemed to carry terrible conviction to Mr. Dare’s mind. Unwilling to believe the girl, he sought Joseph and asked him.

  “Yes, for certain,” Joseph answered. “Mr. Herbert, as he was coming downstairs to go out, stopped to speak to me, sir, and he was fastening his cloak on then.”

  Minny ran up, bursting with grief and terror as she seized upon Mr. Dare. “Papa! papa! is it true?” she sobbed.

  “Is what true, child?”

  “That it was Herbert? They are saying so.”

  “Hush!” said Mr. Dare. Carrying a candle, he went up to Herbert’s room, his heart aching. That Herbert could sleep through the noise was surprising; and yet, not much so. His room was more remote from the house than were the other rooms, and looked towards the back. But, had he slept through it? When Mr. Dare went in, he was sitting up in bed, awaking, or pretending to awake, from sleep. The window, thrown wide open, may have contributed to deaden any sound in the house. “Can you sleep through this, Herbert?” cried Mr. Dare.

  Herbert stared, and rubbed his eyes, and stared again, as one bewildered. “Is that you, father?” he presently cried. “What is it?”

  “Herbert,” said his father, in low tones of pain, of dread; “what have you been doing to your brother?”

  Herbert, as if not understanding the drift of the question, stared more than ever. “I have done nothing to him,” he presently said. “Do you mean Anthony?”

  “Anthony is lying on the dining-room floor killed — murdered. Herbert, who did it?”

  Herbert Dare sat motionless in bed, looking utterly lost. That he could not understand, or was affecting not to understand, was evident. “Anthony is — what do you say, sir?”

  “He is dead; he is murdered,” replied Mr. Dare. “Oh, my son, my son, say you did not do it! for the love of heaven, say you did not do it!” And the unhappy father burst into tears and sank down on the bed, utterly unmanned.

  CHAPTER III.

  ACCUSED.

  The grey dawn of the early May morning was breaking over the world — over the group gathered in Mr. Dare’s dining-room. That gentleman, his surviving sons, a stranger, a constable or two; and Sergeant Delves, who had been summoned to the scene. Sundry of the household were going in and out, of their own restless, curious accord, or by summons. The sergeant was making inquiries into the facts and details of the evening.

  Anthony Dare — as may be remembered — had sullenly retired to his room, refusing to go out when the message came to him from Lord Hawkesley. It appeared, by what was afterwards learnt, that he, Anthony Dare, had made an appointment to meet Hawkesley and some other men at the Star-and-Garter hotel, where Lord Hawkesley was staying; the proposed amusement of the evening being cards. Anthony Dare remained in his chamber, solacing his chafed temper with brandy-and-water, until the waiter from the Star-and-Garter appeared a second time, bearing a note. This note Sergeant Delves had found in one of the pockets, and had it now open before him. It ran as follows: —

  “Dear Dare, — We are all here waiting, and can’t make up the tables without you. What do you mean by shirking us? Come along, and don’t be a month over it. — Yours,

  “Hawkesley.”

  This note had prevailed. Anthony, possibly repenting of the solitary evening to which he had condemned himself, put on his boots again and went forth: not — it is not pleasant to have to record it, but it cannot be concealed — not sober. He had taken ale with his dinner, wine after it, and brandy-and-water in his room. The three combined had told upon him.

  On his arrival at the Star-and-Garter, he found six or seven gentlemen assembled. But, instead of sitting down there in Lord Hawkesley’s room, it was suddenly decided to adjourn to the lodgings of a Mr. Brittle, hard by; a young Oxonian, who had been plucked in his Little Go, and was supposed to be reading hard to avoid a second similar catastrophe. They went to Mr. Brittle’s and sat down to cards, over which brandy-and-water and other drinks were introduced. Anthony Dare, by way of quenching his thirst, did not spare them, and was not particular as to the sorts. The consequence was that he soon became most disagreeable company, snarling with all around; in short, unfit for play. This contretemps put the rest of the party out of sorts, and they broke up. But for that, they might probably have sat on, until morning, and that poor unhappy life have been spared. There was no knowing what might have been. Anthony Dare was in no fit state to walk alone, and one of them, Mr. Brittle, undertook to see him home. Mr. Brittle left him at the gate, and Anthony Dare stumbled over the lawn and gained the house. After that, nothing further was known. So much as this would not have been known, but that, in hastening for Delves, the policeman had come across Mr. Brittle. It was only natural that the latter, shocked and startled, should bend his steps to the scene; and from him they gathered the account of Anthony’s movements abroad.

  But now came the difficulty. Who had let Anthony in? No one. There was little doubt that he had made his way through the dining-room window. Joseph had turned the key of
the front door at eleven o’clock, and he had not been called upon to open it until the return of Mr. and Mrs. Dare. The policeman who happened to be passing when Anthony came home — or it may be more correct to say, was brought home — testified to the probable fact that he had entered by means of the dining-room window. The man had watched him: had seen that, instead of making for the front door, which faced the road and was in view, he had stumbled across the grass, and disappeared down by the side of the house. On this side the dining-room window was situated; therefore it was only reasonable to suppose that Anthony had so entered.

  “Had you any motive in watching him?” asked Sergeant Delves of this man.

  “None, except to see that he did not fall,” was the reply. “When the gentleman who brought him home loosed his arm, he told him, in a joking way, not to get kissing the ground as he went in; and I thought I’d watch him that I might go to his assistance if he did fall. He could hardly walk: he pitched about with every step.”

  “Did he fall?”

  “No; he managed to keep up. But I should think he was a good five minutes getting over the grass plat.”

  “Did the gentleman remain to watch him?”

  “No, not for above a minute. He just waited to see that he got safe over the gravel path on to the grass, and then he went back.”

  “Did you see anyone else come in? About that time? — or before it? — or after it?”

  The man shook his head. “I didn’t see anyone else at all. I shut the gate after Mr. Anthony, and I didn’t see it opened again. Not but what plenty might have opened and shut it, and gone in, too, when I was higher up my beat.”

  Sergeant Delves called Joseph. “It appears uncommonly odd that you should have heard no noise whatever,” he observed. “A man’s movements are not generally very quiet when in the state described as being that of young Mr. Dare’s. The probability is that he would enter the dining-room noisily. He’d be nearly sure to fall against the furniture, being in the dark.”