by Ellen Wood
So they went out, each with his gun, and a favourite dog of the baronet’s, Spot, and joined a neighbours shooting party, as had been arranged. Colonel Clutton’s land joined Sir Vincent’s; he was a keen lover of sport, always making up parties for it, and if Sir Vincent went out at all, it was sure to be with Colonel Clutton.
“To-day and to-morrow will be my last turn-out this season,” observed the baronet, as they walked along. “Not sorry for it. One gets a large amount of fatigue: don’t think the slaughter compensates for that.”
Reaching the meeting-place, they found a party of some three or four gentlemen and two keepers. Gerald was introduced to Colonel Clutton, an elderly man with snow-white hair. The sport set in. It was late in the season, and the birds were getting scarce or wary, but a tolerably fair number fell.
“The gentleman don’t seem to handle his gun gainly, sir, as if he’d played with one as a babby,” observed one of the keepers confidentially in Sir Vincent’s ear.
He alluded to Gerald Yorke. Sir Vincent turned and looked. Though not much addicted to shooting, he was thoroughly conversant with it: and what he saw, as he watched Gerald, a little surprised him.
“I say, Gerald Yorke, you must take care,” he called out. “Did you never handle a gun before?”
The suggestion offended Gerald: the question nettled him. His face grew dark.
“What do you mean, Sir Vincent?” was his angry answer. He would have liked to affirm his great knowledge of shooting: but his chief practice had been with a pop-gun at school.
Sir Vincent laughed a little. “Don’t do any mischief, that’s all.”
It might have been that the public caution caused Gerald to be more careless, just to prove his proficiency; it might have been that it tended to flurry him. Certainly he would not have caused harm wilfully; but nevertheless it took place.
Not ten minutes after Sir Vincent had spoken, he was crossing a narrow strip of open ground towards a copse. Gerald, leaping through a gap in the hedge not far behind, carrying his gun (like a senseless man) on full cock, contrived, in some inextricable manner, to discharge it. Whether his elbow caught in the leafless branches, or the trigger caught, or what it was, Gerald Yorke never knew, and never will know to his dying day. The charge went off; there was a cry, accompanied by shouts of warning, somebody on the ground in front, and the rest running to surround the fallen man.
“You have no right to come out, sir, unless you can handle a gun properly!” spoke Colonel Clutton to Gerald, in the moment’s confusion. “I have been watching your awkwardness all the morning.”
Gerald looked pale with fear, dark with anger. He made no reply whatever: only pressed forward to see who was down, the men, in their velveteen coats and leggings, looking much alike. Sir Vincent Yorke.
“It’s not much, I think,” said the baronet, good-naturedly, as he looked up at Gerald. “But I say, though, you should have candidly answered me that you were not in the habit of shooting, when I sent you the invitation.”
No, it was not much. A few shots had entered the calf of the left leg. They got out pocket-handkerchiefs, and tied them tightly round to stop the hemorrhage. The dog, Spot, laid his head close to his master’s face, and whined pitiably.
“What sense them dumb animals have! — a’most human!” remarked the keeper.
“This will stop my Paris trip,” observed Sir Vincent, as they were conveying him home.
“Better that was stopped than your wedding,” replied Colonel Clutton, with a jesting smile. “You keep yourself quiet, now, that you may be well for that. Don’t talk.”
Sir Vincent acquiesced readily. At the best of times he was sensitive to pain, and somewhat of a coward in regard to his own health. At home he was met by a skilful surgeon. The shots were extracted, and Sir Vincent was made comfortable in bed. Gerald Yorke waylaid the doctor afterwards.
“Is it serious? Will he do well? Sir Vincent is my cousin.”
“Oh — Mr. Yorke: the gentleman whose gun unfortunately caused the mishap,” was the answering remark. “Of course these accidents are always serious, more or less. This one might have been far worse than it is.”
“He will do well?”
“Quite well. At least, I hope so. I see nothing to hinder it. Sir Vincent will be a tractable patient, you see; and a good deal lies in that.”
“There’s no danger, then?”
“Oh no: no danger.”
Gerald, relieved on the score of apprehension of consequences, had the grace to express his regret and sorrow to the baronet. Sir Vincent begged him to think no more about it: only recommended him not to go out with a party in future, until he had had some practice. Gerald, untrue to the end, said he was a little out of practice; should soon get into it again. Sir Vincent made quite light of the hurt; it was nothing to speak of, the doctor had said; would not delay his marriage, or anything. But he did not ask Gerald to remain: and that gentleman, in spite of his hints, and his final offer to stay, found he was expected to go. Sir Vincent expressed his acknowledgments, but said he wished for perfect quiet.
So, on the day following the accident, Gerald Yorke returned to town; which was a day sooner than, even at the worst, he had bargained for; and arrived in a temper. Taking one untoward disappointment with another, Gerald’s mood could not be expected to be heavenly. He had fully intended to come away with his pockets lined — if by dint of persuasion Sir Vincent could be seduced into doing it. As it was, Gerald had not broached the subject. Sir Vincent was to be kept entirely quiet; and Gerald, with all his native assurance, could not ask a man for money, whom he had just shot.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
In Custody.
PACING his carpet, in the worst state of perturbation possible, was the Reverend Mr. Ollivera. He had so paced it all the morning. Neglecting his ordinary duties, staying indoors when he ought to have been out, unable to eat or to rest, he and his mind were alike in a state of most distressing indecision. The whole of the night had he tossed and turned, and rose up again and again to walk his room, struggling with his conscience. For years past, he had, so to say, lived on the anticipation of this hour: when the memory of his dear brother should be cleared of its foul stain, and the true criminal brought to light. And, now that it had come, he was hesitating whether or not to take advantage of it: whether to let the stain remain, and the criminal escape.
Torn to pieces with doubt and pain, was he. Unable to see where his duty lay, more than once, with lifted hands and eyes and heart, a cry to Heaven to direct him broke from his lips. Passages of Scripture, bearing both ways, crowded on his mind, to puzzle him the more; but there was one great lesson he could not ignore — the loving, merciful teaching of Jesus Christ.
About one o’clock, when the remembrance of the miserable grave, and of him who had been so miserably put into it, lay very strong upon him, Alletha Rye came into the room with some white cravats of the parson’s in her hand. She was neat and nice as usual, wearing a soft merino gown with white-worked cuffs and collars, her fair hair smooth and abundant.
“I have done the best I could with them, sir: cut off the edges and hemmed them afresh,” she said. “After that, I passed the iron over them, and they look just as if fresh got up.”
“Thank you,” murmured Mr. Ollivera, the colour flushing his face, and speaking in a confused kind of manner, like a man overtaken in a crime.
“Great heaven, can I go on with it?” he exclaimed, as she went out, leaving the neckerchiefs on the table. “Is it possible to believe that she did it? — with her calm good face, with her clear honest eye?” he continued in an agony of distress. “Oh, for guidance! — that I may be shown what my course ought to be!”
As a personal matter, to give Alletha Rye into custody would cause him grievous pain. She had lived under the same roof with him, showing him voluntarily a hundred little courtesies and kindnesses. These white cravats of his, just put to rights, had been undertaken in pure good will.
How very much
of our terrible seasons of distress might be spared to us, if we could but see a little further than the present moment; than the atmosphere immediately around. Henry William Ollivera might have been saved his: had he but known that while he was doubting, another was acting. Mr. Greatorex had taken it into his own hands, and the house’s trouble was, even then, at the very door. In after life, Henry Ollivera never ceased to be thankful that it was not himself who brought it.
A commotion below. Mr. Roland Yorke had entered, and was calling out to the house to bring his dinner. It was taken to him in the shape of some slices of roast mutton and potatoes. When Mrs. Jones had a joint herself, Roland was served from it. That she was no gainer by the bargain, Mrs. Jones was conscious of; the small sum she allowed herself in repayment out of the weekly sovereign, debarred it: but Roland was favoured for the sake of old times.
Close almost upon that, there came a rather quiet double knock at the street door, which Miss Rye went to answer. Roland thought he recognised a voice, and ran out, his mouth full of mutton.
“Why, it’s never you, old Butterby! What brings you in London again?”
Whatever brought Mr. Butterby to London, something curious appeared to have brought him to Mrs. Jones’s. A policeman had followed him in, and was shutting the street door, with a manner quite at home. There escaped a faint cry from Alletha, and her face turned white as ashes. Roland stared from one to the other.
“What on earth’s the matter?” demanded he.
“I’d like to speak to you in private for a minute, Miss Rye,” said Mr. Butterby, in a low civil tone. “Tomkins, you wait there.”
She went higher up the passage and looked round something like a stag at bay. There was no unoccupied room to take him to. Mr. Brown’s frugal dinner tray (luncheon, as he called it) was in his, awaiting his entrance. That the terrible man of law with his officer had come to arrest him Alletha never doubted. A hundred wild ideas of telegraphing him some impossible warning, not to enter, went teeming through her brain. Tomkins stood on the entrance mat; Roland Yorke, with his accustomed curiosity, put his back against his parlour door-post to watch proceedings.
“Miss Rye, I’d not have done this of my own accord, leastways not so soon, but it has been forced upon me,” whispered Mr. Butterby. “I’ve got to ask you to go with me.”
“To ask me?” she tremblingly said, while he was showing her a paper: probably the warrant.
“Are you so much surprised: after that there avowal you made to me last night? If I’d gone and told a police officer that I had killed somebody, it would not astonish me to be took.”
Her face fell. The pallor of her cheeks was coloured by a faint crimson; her eyes flashed with a condemning light.
“I told you in confidence, as one friend might speak to another; in defence of him who was not there to defend himself,” she panted. “How could I suppose you would hasten treacherously to use it against me?”
“Ah,” said Mr. Butterby, “in things of that sort us law defenders is just the wrong sort to make confidants of. But now, look here, Miss Rye, I didn’t go and abuse that confidence, and though it is me that has put the wheels of the law in motion, it is done in obedience to orders, which I had no power to stop. I’m sorry to have to do it: and I’ve come down with the warrant myself out of respect to you, that things might be accomplished as genteel as might be.”
“Now then, Alletha! Do you know that your dinner’s getting cold? What on earth are you stopping there for? Who is it?”
The interruption was from Mrs. Jones, called out through the nearly closed door of her parlour. Alletha, making no response, looked fit to die.
“Have you come to arrest me?” she whispered.
“Well, it’s about it, Miss Rye. Apprehend, that is. We’ll get a cab and you’ll go in it with my friend there, all snug and quiet. I’m vexed that young Yorke should just be at home. Tried to get here half an hour earlier, but—”
Mrs. Jones’s door was pulled open with a jerk. To describe the aggravated astonishment on her face when she saw the state of affairs, would be a work of skill. Alletha with a countenance of ghastly fear; Mr. Butterby whispering to her; the policeman on the door mat; Roland Yorke looking leisurely on.
“Well, I’m sure!” exclaimed Mrs. Jones. “What may be the meaning of this?”
There could be no evasion now. Had Alletha in her secret heart hoped to keep it from her tart, condemning, and strong-minded sister, the possibility was over. She went down the few steps that led to the room, and entered it; Mr. Butterby close behind her. The latter was shutting the door, when Roland Yorke walked in, taking French leave.
Which of the two stared the most, Mrs. Jones or Roland, and which of the two felt inclined to abuse Mr. Butterby the most, when his errand became known, remains a question to this day. Roland’s championship was hot.
“You know you always do take the wrong people, Butterby!”
“Now, young Mr. Yorke, just you concern yourself with your own business, and leave other folks’s alone,” was the detective’s answering reprimand. “I don’t see what call you have to be in this here room at all.”
In all the phases of the affair, with its attendant conjectures and suspicions, from the first moment that she saw John Ollivera lying dead in her house, the possibility of Alletha’s being cognisant of its cause, much less connected with it, had never once entered the head of Mrs. Jones. She stared from one to the other in simple wonder.
“What is it you charge my sister with, Butterby? — the death of Counsellor Ollivera?”
“Well, yes; that’s it,” he answered.
“And how dare you do it?”
“Now, look you here, Mrs. Jones,” said Butterby, in a tone of reason, putting his hand calmly on her wrist, “I’ve told Miss Rye, and I tell you, that these proceedings are instituted by the law, not by me; if I had not come to carry them out, another would, who might have done it in a rougher manner. A woman of your sense ought to see the matter in its right light. I don’t say she’s guilty, and I hope she’ll be able to prove that she’s not; but I can tell you this much, Mrs. Jones, there’s them that have had their suspicions turned upon her from the first.”
Being a woman of sense, as Mr. Butterby delicately insinuated, Mrs. Jones began to feel a trifle staggered. Not at his words: they had little power over her mind, but at Alletha’s appearance. Leaning against the wall there, white, faint, silent, she looked like one guilty, rather than innocent. And it suddenly struck Mrs. Jones that she did not attempt a syllable in her own defence.
“Why don’t you speak out, girl?” she demanded, in her tartest tone. “You can, I suppose?”
But the commotion had begun to cause attention in the quiet house. Not so much from its noise, as by that subtle instinct that makes itself heard, we cannot tell how; and Mr. Ollivera came in.
“Who has done this?” he briefly asked of the detective.
“Mr. Greatorex, sir.”
“The next thing they’ll do may be to take me up on the charge,” spoke Mrs. Jones with acrimony.
“What on earth put this into their miserable heads? You don’t suspect her, I hope, Mr, Ollivera!”
He only looked at Mrs. Jones in silence by way of answer: a grave meaning in his sad face. It spoke volumes: and Mrs. Jones, albeit not one to give way to emotion, or any other kind of weakness, felt as if a jug of cold water were being poured down her back. Straightforward, always, she put the question to him with naked plainness.
“Do you suspect her?”
“I have suspected her,” came the low tones of Mr. Ollivera in answer. “Believe me, Mrs. Jones, whatever may be the final result of this, I grieve for it bitterly.”
“I say, why can’t you speak up, and say you did not do it?” stamped Roland, in his championship. “Don’t be frightened out of your senses by Butterby. He never pitches upon the right person; Mrs. J. remembers that.”
“As this here talking won’t do any good — and I’m sure if it would
I’d let it go on a bit — suppose we make a move,” interposed Butterby. “If you’d like to put up a few things to take with you, Miss Rye, do so. You’ll have to go to Helstonleigh.”
“Oh, law!” cried Roland. “I say, Butterby, it’s a mistake, I know. Let her go. Come! you shall have all my dinner.”
“Don’t stand there like a statue, as if you were moon-struck,” said Mrs, Jones, seizing her sister to administer a slight shaking. “Tell them you are innocent, girl, if you can; and let Butterby go about his business.”
And in response, Alletha neither spoke nor moved.
But at this moment another actor came upon the scene. A knock at the front door was politely answered at once by the policeman, glad, no doubt, to have something to do, and Mr. Brown entered, arriving at home for his mid-day meal. Roland dashed into the passage.
“I say, Brown, here is a stunning shame. Old Butterby’s come to take up Alletha Rye.”
“Take her up for what?” Mr. Brown calmly asked.
“For the killing and slaying of Counsellor Ollivera, he says. But in these things he never was anything but a calf.”
Mr. Brown turned into his room, put down his hat and a small paper parcel, and went on to the scene. Before he could say a word, Alletha Rye burst forth like one demented.
“Don’t come here, Mr. Brown. We’ve nothing to do with strangers. I can’t have all the world looking at me.”