by Ellen Wood
“And Lady Laura made the letter public?” he exclaimed, breaking a long pause. And Mr. Billiter could not help remarking the tone of bitter pain in which the words were spoken.
“Not intending to injure you. She had no idea what the letter could mean; and, as I say, thought it had got into your possession by some mistake. She showed it to Lady Jane only because it was the handwriting of her sister Clarice.”
“I never knew it,” he said, in a dreamy tone. “I never knew it.” But whether he meant that he never knew Clarice was her sister, or that he never knew the letter was amongst his papers, must be left to conjecture. Mr. Billiter resumed.
“Nothing would have been known of the precise manner in which the letter came to light, but for Lady Laura’s self-reproach when she found the letter had led to your arrest. Just after you were taken to-day, Mother Pepperfly was at your house — by what; accident I’m sure I don’t know — and Lady Jane Chesney entered while she was there. Lady Laura broke into a storm of self-reproach in her sister’s arms, confessing how she had procured a skeleton key, picked the lock of your safe, and so found the letter. The fat old woman heard it all, and came forth with it. I met her, and she told me; and it seems the next she met was one of the police, and she told him, and he went straight up to Drone, and imparted it to him: and that’s how it reached the ears of the magistrates. It seems as if the hand of Fate had been at work with the letter,” irascibly concluded Lawyer Billiter.
Perhaps the “hand of Fate” had been at work with the letter, though in a different way from that meant by Mr. Billiter. He had only spoken in the moment’s vexation. What would he have said, had he known how strangely the letter had been preserved, when Mr. Carlton had all along thought it was destroyed?
Nothing more could be done until the morning, and Mr. Billiter wished his client good night. Some gentlemen — former acquaintances — called to see Mr. Carlton: he was not yet abandoned: but the officials declined to admit any one to his presence, except his lawyer, civilly saying it was not the custom at the lock-up. Mr. Carlton was asked what he would like for supper; but he said he preferred not to take any supper, and requested the use of writing materials. They were supplied him, together with a small table to write upon, and the further use of the lamp: the latter a favour which most likely would not have been accorded to a prisoner of less degree. In fact, the police could not all at once learn to treat Mr. Carlton as a prisoner; and perhaps it might be excused to them, considering the position he had, up to the last twelve hours, held at South Wennock, and that he was as yet only under remand.
There was a youngish man who had rather lately joined the force. His name was Bowler. Mr. Carlton had since attended him in an illness, and been very kind to him, and Bowler was now especially inclined to be deferential and attentive to the prisoner. He entered the room the last thing quite late at night, to inquire whether the prisoner wanted anything, and saw on the table a letter addressed to the Lady Laura Carlton.
“Did you want it delivered to her ladyship to-night, sir?” asked the man.
“Oh no,” said Mr. Carlton; “to-morrow morning will do. Let it be sent as soon as possible, Bowler.”
So the man left him for the night, locking and barring the door, after civilly wishing him a good rest: which, under the circumstances, might perhaps be regarded as a superfluous compliment.
It was this same attentive official — and the man really did wish to be attentive to Mr. Carlton, and to soften his incarceration by any means not strictly illegitimate — who was the first to enter the cell in the morning. He was coming in with an offer of early coffee; but the prisoner seemed to be fast asleep.
“No need to wake him up just yet,” thought Bowler; “he can have another hour of it. Perhaps he hasn’t long got to sleep.”
He was silently stealing out of the cell again when he remembered the letter for Lady Laura which Mr. Carlton had wished delivered early. The man turned, took it from the table where it still lay, and carried it to an officer, older and more responsible than himself.
“I suppose I may go with it?” said he, showing the letter. “Mr. Carlton said he wanted it taken the first thing in the morning. He’s not awake yet.”
The older man took the letter, and turned it over and over. Every little matter connected with such a prisoner as Mr. Carlton bore an interest even for these policemen. The envelope was securely fastened down with its gum. If a thought crossed the officer that he should like to unfasten it, and see what was written there, — if an idea arose that it might be in his duty to examine any letter of the prisoner’s before sending it out, he did not act upon it.
“You may take it at once,” he said.
But policemen, however favourably disposed towards prisoners under their charge, are very rarely inclined to forego their own meals; and Bowler thought he might just as well take his roll and coffee before he started. This accomplished over the stove of the lock-up, he left that unpopular building, asking a question as he went out.
“Am I to wait and bring back any answer?”
“Yes, if there is one. You can inquire.”
Mr. Bowler went down the street, stoically self-possessed to all appearance, but inwardly full of importance at being the bearer of the letter which was hidden in a safe pocket from the gaze of the curious public. It was a regular winter’s morning, a little frosty, the sky dull and cloudy, with a patch of blue here and there. South Wennock street was already alive with bustle. Every soul in the place had resolved to obtain a footing within the town-hall that day, however unsuccessful they might have been the previous one; and they probably thought that the earlier they got up, the more chance there would be of accomplishing it.
Mr. Bowler went through Mr. Carlton’s gate and gave two knocks and a ring at the front door, after the manner of the London postmen. The servant who answered it was Jonathan.
“Can I see Lady Laura Carlton?”
“No,” said Jonathan, shaking his head.
With so uncompromising a denial, Mr. Bowler did not see his way quite clear to get to her ladyship and to gratify his own self-importance by answering any questions she might put to him. “Could this be given to her at once, then?” said he. “And say if there’s any answer I shall be happy to take it back to Mr. Carlton.”
“My lady’s not here,” said the man. “She’s at Cedar Lodge. She went there yesterday evening with Lady Jane.”
Mr. Bowler stood a moment while he digested the news. He then returned the letter to his pocket preparatory to proceeding to Cedar Lodge. Jonathan arrested him as he was turning away.
“I say, Mr. Bowler, will it turn bad against master, do you think?” he asked, with an anxious face. “If you don’t mind saying.”
Mr. Bowler condescendingly replied that it might or it mightn’t: these charges were always ticklish things, though folks did sometimes come out of them triumphant.
With that, he resumed his march to Cedar Lodge, where Lady Laura was. He told his business to Judith, and was admitted to the presence of her mistress. Jane was in the breakfast-room, doing what Mr. Bowler had recently done — taking a cup of coffee. She had not been in bed, for Laura had remained in a state of extreme excitement all night; now bewailing her husband and reproaching herself as the cause of all this misery; now throwing hard words to him for his treachery in the days gone by. There was one advantage in this excitement: that it would spend itself the sooner. Passion with Laura, of whatever nature, was hot and uncontrollable while it lasted, but it never lasted very long.
Calm, gentle, pale, her manner subdued even more than usual with the terrible distress that was upon them, what a contrast Jane presented to her impulsive sister! As Mr. Bowler spoke to her, he seemed to have entered into a calmer world. Half that night had been passed, by Jane, with One who can give tranquillity in life’s darkest moments.
“Mr. Carlton desired that it should be sent to Lady Laura the first thing this morning, my lady,” said the man, standing with his glazed ha
t in his hand. “So I came off with it at once.”
Jane received the letter from him and looked at its address. “Is — is Mr. Carlton pretty well this morning?” she asked, in low tones.
“Mr. Carlton’s not awake yet, my lady. He seemed very well List night.”
“Not awake!” involuntarily exclaimed Jane, scarcely believing is within the range of possibility that Mr. Carlton could sleep at all with that dreadful charge upon him.
“Leastways, he wasn’t awake when I come out of the lock-up,” returned Bowler. “We often do find our prisoners sleep late in the morning, my lady. Some of them only fall asleep when they ought to be waking up.”
Jane could not resist another question. In spite of her long-rooted and unaccountable dislike to Mr. Carlton, in spite of this terrible discovery, she pitied him from her heart, as a humane Christian woman must pity such criminals.
“Does he — appear to feel it very much, Bowler?” she asked. “Does he seem overwhelmed by the thought of his position?”
“We didn’t notice anything of that, my lady,” was the man’s answer — and it may as well be remarked that he had been engaged in a little matter of business with Lady Jane Chesney some three or four months before; the son of a poor woman in whom she was interested having got into trouble concerning certain tempting apples in a garden on the Rise. “He was quite brisk yesterday evening when he came in, my lady: there didn’t seem any difference in him at all from ordinary. Of course it has got to be proved yet whether he did it or not.”
Jane sighed, and left him to carry the letter to Laura, telling him she would bring back the answer if there was any. She had hesitated for a moment whether to give it to her at all, lest it might add to her state of excitement. But she felt that she had no right to keep it back from her. Who, in a case like this, the law excepted, could intercept a communication between husband and wife?
Laura — it might be that she had heard the policeman in the house — was sitting up in bed in a dressing-gown, with wild dark eyes and a flushed face. Jane would have broken the news to her gently — that there was a letter from Mr. Carlton — and so have prepared her to receive it; but Laura was not one of those who submit to be prepared, and she snatched the letter from Jane’s hand and tore it open.
“Forgive me, Laura, for the disgrace and wretchedness this trouble will entail upon you. Full of perplexity and doubt as this moment is, it is of you I think, more than of myself. Whatever I may have done wrong in the past, as connected with this matter, I did it for your sake. After the production of the certificate brought forward to-day, it would seem useless to deny that I married Clarice Beauchamp. But mind! whatever confession I may make to you, I make none to the world; let them fight out the truth for themselves if they can. I never knew her but as Clarice Beauchamp; I never knew that she had claim to a higher position in life than that of a governess. She was always utterly silent to me on the subject of her family and connections; and I assumed that she was an orphan. I admired Miss Beauchamp; I was foolish enough to marry her secretly; and not until I was afterwards introduced to you, did I find out my mistake — that I had mistaken admiration for love.
“How passionately I grew to love you, I leave you to remember: you have not forgotten it. I was already scheming in my heart the ways and means by which my hasty marriage might be dissolved, when she forced herself down to South Wennock. The news came upon me as a thunderbolt. The same spot contained herself and you, and in the dread of discovery, the fear that you might come to know that I had already a wife, I went mad. Laura, hear me! It is the honest truth, as far as I have ever since, looking back, believed — that I went mad in my desperation, and was no more accountable for my actions than a madman is.
“And there’s the whole truth in few words. When my senses came to me — and they came to me that same night — I awoke from what seemed an impossible dream. All that could be done then was to guard, if I might, the secret, and to put on armour against the whole human race; armour that should stand between myself and the outer world.
“It is you, Laura, who have at length brought discovery upon me. Oh, why could you not have trusted me wholly? Whatever clouds there might have been in our married life, I declare upon my honour that they had passed, and any later suspicions you may have entertained were utterly groundless. Had you come honestly to me and said ‘I want to see what you keep in that safe in the drug-room,’ I would willingly have given you the key. There was nothing in the safe, as far as I knew, that you and all the world might not have seen; nothing that could work me harm; for this letter, that it seems you found, I thought I had burnt long ago. But, having found the letter, why did you not bring it to me and ask for an explanation, rather than give it to Lady Jane? Surely a husband should be closer than a sister! I might not have told you the truth; it is not likely that I should; but I should have explained sufficient to satisfy you, and on my part I should have learnt the inconceivable fact, that Clarice Beauchamp was Clarice Chesney. Now and then there has been something in Lucy’s face — ay, and in yours — that has reminded me of her.
“But, my darling, if I allude to this — to your finding the letter — I do it not to reproach you. On the contrary, I write only to give you my full and free forgiveness. The betrayal, I am certain, was not intentional, and I know that you are feeling it keenly. I forgive you, Laura, with all my loving heart.
“I could not go to rest without this word of explanation. Think of me with as little harshness as you can, Laura.
“Your unhappy husband,
“L. C.”
Lady Jane returned to the policeman. There was no answer then, she said: but she bade him tell Mr. Carlton that Lady Laura would write to him in the course of the day.
Mr. Policeman Bowler recommenced his promenade back again. Nodding his head with gracious condescension from side to side, when the public greeted him, as it was incumbent on an officer, confidentially engaged in so important a cause, to do. Half a hundred would have assailed him with questions and remarks, but Mr. Bowler knew his dignity better than to respond to them, and bore on his way erect and inscrutable.
Little Wilkes the barber was standing at his shop door and ran up to him. The two were on private terms of friendship, and Mr. Bowler was sometimes regaling himself surreptitiously with supper in the barber’s back-parlour when he was supposed to be engaged in the zealous performance of duty. “I say, Bowler, do tell! Is the hour ten or eleven that the case is coming on?”
“Ten, sharp,” replied Bowler. “I’ll find you a place if you are there an hour beforehand.” As he spoke the last words, and went on, a slight turning in the street brought him in sight of the lockup. And there appeared to be some sort of stir going on within that official building. A hum of voices could be heard even at this distance, and three or four persons were dashing out of it in a state of commotion.
“What’s up?” cried Mr. Bowler to himself, as he increased his speed. “What’s up?” he repeated aloud, seizing upon the first runner he met.
“It’s something about Mr. Carlton,” was the answer. “They are saying he has escaped. There seems a fine hubbub in the lock-up.”
Escaped! Mr. Carlton escaped! Mr. Policeman Bowler did the least sensible thing he could have done while a prisoner was escaping; he stood still and stared. A question was rushing wildly through his mind: could he, himself, by misadventure, have left the strong room unbarred?
CHAPTER XXV.
ESCAPED.
WHEN South Wennock awoke on that eventful morning, its chief thought was, how it could best secure a place in the town-hall, by fighting, bribery, or stratagem, to hear the conclusion of Mr. Carlton’s examination. Vague reports had floated about the town on the previous evening, of the witnesses likely to be examined; and the name of Mr. Carlton’s wife was mentioned for one, as touching the finding of the letter. Half the town scouted the idea; but at least it added to the general ferment; and as a matter of course every one rose with the lark, and breakfasted
by candle-light. It was, you are aware, in the dead of winter, when the days are at the shortest.
Perhaps of all South Wennock, the one to think most of the prisoner with intense, sorrowful pity, was Sir Stephen Grey. Few men possessed the milk of human kindness as did he. He dwelt not on the past dark Story, its guilt and its strategy; he thought of the unhappy prisoner, alone in his solitary cell: and he longed to soothe, if possible, his disgrace and suffering by any means in his power. So the first thing Sir Stephen did, after taking a hasty breakfast at his brother’s table, was to put on his hat and go down to the lock-up. This was just at the precise time that Mr. Policeman Bowler was marching home in all self-importance from his errand to Cedar Lodge.
As Stephen Grey gained the lock-up from one quarter, Lawyer Billiter was observed approaching it from another; and the policeman in charge, seeing these visitors, began to think he ought to have aroused his prisoner earlier. He sent one of his staff to do it now.
“Ask him to get up at once; and then come back and take in his breakfast,” were the orders. “And tell him that Lawyer Billiter’s coming down the street. Good morning, Sir Stephen.”
“Well, Jones!” cried Sir Stephen, in his open, affable manner — for the man had been one of the police staff in the old days, and Stephen Grey had known him well: “how are you? A cold morning! And how’s Mr. Carlton?”
“He’s all right, sir, thank you. I’ve just sent in to awaken him.”
“What, is he not awake yet?” cried Sir Stephen, rather wondering. “Not yet, sir. Unless he has awakened since Bowler went in, and that’s about three quarters of an hour ago. Good morning, Mr. Billiter!” added the policeman in a parenthesis, as the lawyer entered. “Mr. Carlton wrote a letter to his wife last night, and Bowler has stepped down with it. But what he’s stopping for I can’t make out, unless she’s writing a long answer—”