by Ellen Wood
“Saying nothing?”
“I tell you all, I would not listen to it. I remembered scraps of what he said afterwards. That Anna was not to blame — that I had no cause to scold her or to acquaint Patience with what happened — that the fault, if there was any fault, was mine, for locking the back door so quickly. I refused to hear farther, and he departed, saying he would explain when I was less angry. That is all I saw of him.”
“Did you mention this affair to anyone?” asked the counsel for the prosecution.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“The child clung about me in tears after he was gone, giving me the explanation that I would not hear from him, and beseeching me not to acquaint Patience. She told me how it had happened. That upon my going out to see after the sleeping-draught for Patience, she had taken the opportunity to run to the field with a book, where Herbert Dare waited: and that upon attempting to come in again she found the door locked.”
“You returned sooner than she expected?”
“Yes. I met the doctor’s boy near our house, bringing the physic, and I took it from him and went home again directly. Not seeing Anna about, I never thought but that she had retired to bed. I went up also, trying the back door as I passed it, which to my surprise I found unfastened.”
“Why to your surprise?”
“Because I had, as I believed, previously turned the key of it. Finding it unlocked, I concluded I must have been mistaken. Afterwards, when the explanation came, I learnt that Anna had undone it. She clung about me, as I tell thee, sobbing and crying, saying, as he had said, that there was no cause to be angry with her: that she could not help what had happened; and that she had sat crying on the door-step the whole of the time, until he had effected an entrance for her. I went to the pantry window, and saw where the wires had been torn away, not roughly, but neatly; and I knew it must have taken a long time to accomplish. I fell in with the child’s prayer, and did not speak of what had occurred; not even to Patience. This is the first time it has escaped my lips.”
“So you deemed it desirable to conceal such an adventure, and give the prisoner opportunity to renew his midnight visits?” retorted the counsel for the prosecution.
“What was done could not be undone,” said the witness. “I was willing to spare the scandal to the child, and not be the means of spreading it abroad. While I was deliberating whether to tell Patience, seeing she was in so suffering a state, news came that Herbert Dare was a prisoner. He had been arrested the following morning, on the accusation of murdering his brother, and I knew that he was safe for several weeks to come. Hence I held my tongue.”
The witness had given her evidence in a clear, straightforward, uncompromising manner, widely at variance with the distressed timidity of Anna. Not a shade of doubt rested on the mind of any person in court that both had spoken the exact truth. But the counsel seemed inclined to question still.
“Since when did you know you were coming here to give this evidence?”
“Only when I did come. Richard Winthorne, the man of law, came to our house in a fly this afternoon, and brought us away with him. By some remarks he exchanged with Anna when we were in it, I found that she had known of it this day or two. They feared to avert me, I suppose, lest, maybe, I might refuse to attend.”
“One question more, witness. Did the prisoner wear a cloak that night?”
“No; I did not see any.”
This closed the evidence, and the witness was allowed to withdraw. Richard Winthorne went in search of Samuel Lynn, and found him seated on a bench in the outer hall surrounded by gentlemen of his persuasion, many of them of high standing in Helstonleigh. Tales of marvel, you know, never lose anything in spreading; neither are people given to placing a light construction on public gossip, when they can, by any stretch of imagination, give it a dark one. In this affair, however, no very great stretch was required. The town jumped to the charitable conclusion that Anna Lynn must be one of the naughtiest girls under the sun; imprudent, ungrateful, disobedient; I don’t know what else. Had she been guilty of scattering poison in Atterly’s field, and so killed all the lambs, they could not have said, or thought, worse than they did. All joined in it, charitable and uncharitable; all sorts of evil notions were spread, and were taken up. Herbert Dare, you may be very sure, came in for his share.
The news had been taken to Mr. Ashley’s manufactory, sent by the astounded Patience, that Richard Winthorne had come and taken away Anna and Hester Dell to give testimony at the trial of Herbert Dare. The Quaker, perplexed and wondering, believed Patience must be demented; that the message could have no foundation in truth. Nevertheless, he bent his steps to the Guildhall, accompanied by William Halliburton, and was witness to the evidence. He, strict and sober-minded, was not likely to take up a more favourable construction of the general facts than the town was taking up. It may be guessed what it was for him.
He sat now on a bench in the outer hall, surrounded by friends, who, on hearing the crying scandal whispered, touching a young member of their body, had come flocking down to the Guildhall. When they spoke to him, he did not appear to hear; he sat with his hands on his knees, and his head sunk on his breast, never raising it. Richard Winthorne approached him.
“Miss Lynn and her servant will not be wanted again,” said the lawyer. “I have sent for a fly.”
The fly came. Anna was placed in it by Mr. Winthorne; Hester Dell followed; and Samuel Lynn came forward and stumbled into it. It is the proper word. He appeared to have no power left in his limbs.
“Thou wilt not be harsh with her, Samuel,” whispered an influential Friend, who had a benevolent countenance. “Some of us will confer with thee to-morrow; but, meanwhile, do not be harsh with her. Thou wilt call to mind that she is thy child, and motherless.”
Samuel Lynn made no reply. He did not appear to hear. He sat opposite his daughter, his eyes never lifted, and his face assuming a leaden hue. Hester suddenly leaned from the door, and beckoned to William Halliburton.
“Will thee please be so obliging as go up with us in the fly?” she said in his ear. “I do not like his look.”
William stepped in, and the fly drove away with closed blinds, to the intense chagrin of the curious mob. Before it was out of the town, William and Hester, with a simultaneous movement, supported the Quaker. Anna screamed. “What is it?” she uttered, terrified at the sight of his drawn, distorted face.
“It is thy work,” said Hester, less placidly than she would have spoken in a calmer moment. “If thee hast saved the life of thy friend, Herbert Dare, thee hast probably destroyed that of thy father.”
They were close to the residence of Mr. Parry, and William ordered the fly to stop. The surgeon was at home, and took William’s place in it. Samuel Lynn had been struck down with paralysis.
William was at the house before they were, preparing Patience. Patience was so far restored to health herself as to be able to walk about a little; she was very lame still.
They carried Mr. Lynn to his room. Anna in her deep humiliation and shame — having to give evidence, and such evidence, in the face of that open court, had been nothing less to her — flew to her own chamber, and flung herself, dressed as she was, on the carpet, in desperate abandonment. William saw her there as he passed it from her father’s room. There was no one to attend to her, for they were occupied with Mr. Lynn. It was no moment for ceremony, and William entered and attempted to raise her.
“Let me be, William; let me be! I only want to die.”
“Anna, child, this will not mend the past. Do not give way like this.”
But she resolutely turned from him, sobbing more wildly. “Only to die! only to die!”
William went for his mother, and gave her the outline of the tale, asking her to go to the house of distress and see what could be done. Jane, in utter astonishment, sought further explanation. She could not understand him in the least.
“I assure you, I understand it nearly as little,
” replied William. “Anna was locked out through some mistake of Hester’s, it appears, and Herbert Dare stayed with her. That it will be the means of acquitting him, there is no doubt; but Helstonleigh is making its comments very freely.”
Jane went in, her senses bewildered. She found Patience in a state not to be described; she found Anna where William had left her, reiterating the same cry, “Oh, that I were dead! that I were dead!”
Meanwhile, the trial at the Guildhall was drawing to its close, and the judge proceeded to sum up. Not with the frantic bursts of oratory indulged in by those eloquent gentlemen, the counsel, but in a tone of dispassionate reasoning. He placed the facts concisely before the jury, not speaking in favour of the prisoner, but candidly avowing that he did not see how they could get over the evidence of the prisoner’s two witnesses, the young Quaker lady and her maid. If that was to be believed — and for himself he fully believed it — then the prisoner could not have been guilty of the murder, and was clearly entitled to an acquittal. It was six o’clock when the jury retired to deliberate.
The judge, the bar, the spectators, sat on, or stood, with what patience they might, in the crowded and heated court. On the fiat of those twelve men hung the life of the prisoner: whether he was to be discharged an innocent man, or hanged as a guilty one. Reposing in the pocket of Sir William Leader was a certain little cap, black in colour, innocuous in itself, but of awful significance when brought forth by the hand of the presiding judge. Was it destined to be brought forth that night?
The jury were coming in at last. Only an hour had they remained in deliberation, for seven o’clock was booming out over the town. It had seemed to the impatient spectators more than two hours. What must it have seemed to the prisoner? They ranged themselves in their box, and the crier proclaimed silence.
“Have you agreed upon your verdict, gentlemen of the jury?”
“We have.”
“How say you, gentlemen, guilty or not guilty?”
The foreman advanced an imperceptible step and looked at the judge, speaking deliberately:
“My lord, we find the prisoner Not Guilty.”
CHAPTER XII.
A COUCH OF PAIN.
“William, I have had my death-blow! I have had my death-blow!”
The speaker was Henry Ashley. Four days had elapsed since the trial of Herbert Dare, and William Halliburton saw him now for the first time after that event. What with mind and body, Henry was in a grievous state of pain: all William’s compassion was called forth, as he leaned over his couch.
It has been hinted that Helstonleigh, in its charity, took up the very worst view of the case that could be taken up, with regard to Anna Lynn. Had she gone about with a blazing torch and set all the houses on fire, their inhabitants could not have mounted themselves on higher stilts. Somehow, everybody took it up. It was like those apparently well-authenticated political reports that arrive now and then by telegram, driving the Stock Exchange, or the Paris Bourse, into a state of mad credulity. No one thought to doubt it; people caught up the notion from one another as they catch a fever. If even Samuel Lynn had looked upon it in the worst light, bringing to him paralysis, little chance was there that others might gaze through a brighter glass. It had half killed Henry Ashley: and the words were not, in point of fact, so wild as they sounded. “I have had my death-blow! I have had my death-blow!”
“No, you have not,” was William’s answer. “It is a blow — I know it — but not one that you cannot outlive.”
“Why did you not come to me? Four whole days, and you have never been near the house!”
“Because I feared that you would be throwing yourself into the state of agitation that you are now doing,” replied William, candidly. “Mr. Ashley said to me on the Wednesday, ‘Henry has one of his bad attacks again.’ I knew it to be more of mind than body this time, and I thought it well that you should be left in quiet. There’s no one you can talk about it to, except me.”
“Your staying away has not served your purpose, then. My father came to me with the details, thinking to divert me for a moment from my physical pain; never supposing that each word was a dagger plunged into my very being. My mother came, with this scrap of news, or the other scrap. Mary came, wondering and eager, asking information at second-hand: mamma was mysterious over it, and would not tell her. Mary cannot credit ill of Anna: she has as great a trust in her still as I had. As I had! Oh, William! she was my object in life. She was all my future — my world — my heaven!”
“Now you know you will suffer for this excitement,” cried William, almost as he would have said it to a wayward child.
He might as well have talked to the wind. Henry neither heard nor heeded him. He continued, his manner as full of agitation as his mind.
“I am not as other men. You can go forth, all of you, into the world, to your pleasures, your amusements. I am confined here. But what mattered it? Did I envy you? No. While I had her to think of, I was happier than you.”
“Had this not happened, you might have been crossed in some other way, and so it would have come to the same thing.”
“And now it is over,” reiterated Henry, paying no attention to the remark. “It is over, and gone; and I — I wish, William, I had gone with it.”
“I wish you would be reasonable.”
“Don’t preach. You active men, with your innumerable objects and interests in life, cannot know what it is for one like me, shut out from the world, to love. I tell you, William, it was literally my life; the core of my life; my all. I am not sure but that I have been mad ever since.”
“I am not sure but that you are mad now,” returned William, believing that to humour him might be the worst plan he could adopt.
“I dare say I am,” was the unsatisfactory answer. “Four days, and I have had to bury it all within me! I could not wail it out to my own pillow at night; for they concluded it was one of my bad attacks, and old nurse was posted in the bed in the next room with the door open. There’s no one I can rave to but you, and you must let me do it, unless you would have me go quite mad, I hope I shan’t be here long to be a trouble to any of you.”
William did not know what to say. He believed there was nothing for it at present but to let him “rave himself out.” “But I wish,” he said, aloud, continuing the bent of his own thoughts, “that you would be a little rational over it.”
“Stop a bit. Did you ever experience a blow such as this?”
“No indeed.”
“Then don’t hold forth to me, I say. You do not understand. It was all the joy I had on earth.”
“You must learn to find other joys, other — —”
“The despicable villain!” broke forth Henry, the heat-drops welling to his brow, as they had welled to Anna’s when before the judge. “The shame-faced, cowardly villain! Was she not Samuel Lynn’s child, and my sister’s friend? What possessed the jury to acquit him? Did they think a rope’s-end too good for his neck?”
“He was proved innocent of the murder. If he has any conscience — —”
“What?” fiercely interrupted Henry Ashley. “He a conscience! I don’t know what you are dreaming of. Is he going to stop in Helstonleigh?”
“I conclude so. He resumed his place quietly in his father’s office the day after the trial. He is in London now, but only temporarily.”
“Resumed his place quietly! What was the mob about, then?”
The question was put so quaintly, in such confiding simplicity, that a smile rose to William’s face. “In awe of the police, I expect,” he answered. “The Dares, while his fate was uncertain, have been rusticating. Cyril told me to-day, that now that the accusation was proved to have been false, they were ‘coming out’ again.”
“Coming out in what? Villainy?”
“He left the ‘what’ to be inferred. In grandeur, I expect. The established innocence of Herbert — —”
“If you apply that word to the man, William Halliburton, you are as black as he i
s.”
William remembered Henry’s tribulation both of mind and body, and went on without the shadow of a retort.
“I apply it to him in relation to the crime of which he was charged. His acquittal and release have caused the Dares to hold up their heads again. But they have lost caste in Helstonleigh.”
“Caste!” was the scornful ejaculation of Henry Ashley. “They never had any caste to lose. Does the master intend to retain Cyril in the manufactory?”
“I have heard nothing to the contrary. If he retained him whilst the accusation was hanging over Herbert Dare’s head, he will not be likely to discard him now it is removed.”
“Removed!” shrieked Henry. “If one accusation has been removed, has not a worse taken its place?”
“Would it be just to visit on one brother the sins of another?”
“A nice pair of brothers they are!” cried Henry in the sharp, petulant manner habitual to him, when racked with pain. “How will Samuel Lynn like the company of Cyril Dare by his side in the manufactory, when he gets well again?”
William shook his head. These considerations were not for him. They were Mr. Ashley’s.
“You heard her give her evidence?” resumed Henry, breaking a pause.
“Most of it.”
“Tell it me.”
“No, Henry; it would not do you good to hear it.”
“Tell it me, I say,” persisted Henry wilfully. “I know it in substance. I want to have it repeated over to me, word for word.”
“But — —”
Henry suddenly raised his hand and laid it on William’s lips, with a warning movement. He turned and saw Mary Ashley.
“Take her back to the drawing-room, William,” he whispered. “I can bear no one but you about me now. Not yet, Mary,” he added aloud, motioning his sister away with his hand. “Not now.”
Mary halted in indecision. William advanced, placed her hand within his arm, and led her, somewhat summarily, from the room.
“I am only obeying orders, Miss Ashley,” said he. “They are to see you back to the drawing-room.”