CHAPTER XII.
Nearly three weeks passed--short flashing weeks, crowded withagitations, inward or outward, for all the persons of this story.
After the inquiry before the magistrates--conducted, as she passionatelythought, with the most marked animus on the part of the bench and policetowards the prisoners--had resulted in the committal for trial of Hurdand his five companions, Marcella wrote Aldous Raeburn a letter whichhurt him sorely.
"Don't come over to see me for a little while," it ran. "My mind is allgiven over to feelings which must seem to you--which, I know, do seem toyou--unreasonable and unjust. But they are my life, and when they arecriticised, or even treated coldly, I cannot bear it. When you are notthere to argue with, I can believe, most sincerely, that you have aright to see this matter as you do, and that it is monstrous of me toexpect you to yield to me entirely in a thing that concerns your senseof public duty. But don't come now--not before the trial. I will appealto you if I think you can help me. I _know_ you will if you can. Mr.Wharton keeps me informed of everything. I enclose his last two letters,which will show you the line he means to take up with regard to some ofthe evidence."
Aldous's reply cost him a prodigal amount of pain and difficulty.
"I will do anything in the world to make these days less of a burden toyou. You can hardly imagine that it is not grievous to me to think ofany trouble of yours as being made worse by my being with you. But stillI understand. One thing only I ask--that you should not imagine thedifference between us greater than it is. The two letters you enclosehave given me much to ponder. If only the course of the trial enables mewith an honest heart to throw myself into your crusade of mercy, withwhat joy shall I come and ask you to lead me, and to forgive my ownslower sense and pity!
"I should like you to know that Hallin is very much inclined to agreewith you, to think that the whole affair was a 'scrimmage,' and thatHurd at least ought to be reprieved. He would have come to talk it overwith you himself, but that Clarke forbids him anything that interests orexcites him for the present. He has been very ill and suffering for thelast fortnight, and, as you know, when these attacks come on we try tokeep everything from him that could pain or agitate him. But I see thatthis whole affair is very much on his mind, in spite of my efforts.
"... Oh, my darling! I am writing late at night, with your letter openbefore me and your picture close to my hand. So many things rise in mymind to say to you. There will come a time--there _must!_--when I maypour them all out. Meanwhile, amid all jars and frets, remember this,that I have loved you better each day since first we met.
"I will not come to Mellor then for a little while. My election, littleheart as I have for it, will fill up the week. The nomination-day isfixed for Thursday and the polling for Monday."
Marcella read the letter with a confusion of feeling so great as to bein itself monstrous and demoralising. Was she never to be simple, to seeher way clearly again?
As for him, as he rode about the lanes and beechwoods in the days thatfollowed, alone often with that nature for which all such temperamentsas Aldous Raeburn's have so secret and so observant an affection, he wasperpetually occupied with this difficulty which had arisen betweenMarcella and himself, turning it over and over in the quiet of themorning, before the turmoil of the day began.
He had followed the whole case before the magistrates with the mostscrupulous care. And since then, he had twice run across the Widringtonsolicitor for the defence, who was now instructing Wharton. This man,although a strong Radical, and employed generally by his own side, sawno objection at all to letting Lord Maxwell's heir and representativeunderstand how in his opinion the case was going. Aldous Raeburn was aperson whom everybody respected; confidences were safe with him; and hewas himself deeply interested in the affair. The Raeburns being theRaeburns, with all that that implied for smaller people in Brookshire,little Mr. Burridge was aware of no reason whatever why Westall'semployers should not know that, although Mr. Wharton was working up thedefence with an energy and ability which set Burridge marvelling, it wasstill his, Burridge's opinion, that everything that could be advancedwould be wholly unavailing with the jury; that the evidence, as it cameinto final shape, looked worse for Hurd rather than better; and that theonly hope for the man lay in the after-movement for reprieve which canalways be got up in a game-preserving case.
"And is as a rule political and anti-landlord," thought Aldous, on oneof these mornings, as he rode along the edge of the down. He foresawexactly what would happen. As he envisaged the immediate future, he sawone figure as the centre of it--not Marcella, but Wharton! Wharton wasdefending, Wharton would organise the petition, Wharton would apply forhis own support and his grandfather's, through Marcella. To Whartonwould belong not only the popular _kudos_ of the matter, but much more,and above all, Marcella's gratitude.
Aldous pulled up his horse an instant, recognising that spot in theroad, that downward stretching glade among the beeches, where he hadasked Marcella to be his wife. The pale February sunlight was spreadingfrom his left hand through the bare grey trunks, and over the distantshoulders of the woods, far into the white and purple of the chalkplain. Sounds of labour came from the distant fields; sounds of winterbirds from the branches round him. The place, the time, raised in himall the intensest powers of consciousness. He saw himself as the man_standing midway_ in everything--speculation, politics, sympathies--asthe perennially ineffective and, as it seemed to his morbid mood, theperennially defeated type, beside the Whartons of this world. Wharton!He knew him--had read him long ago--read him afresh of late. Raeburn'slip showed the contempt, the bitterness which the philosopher could notrepress, showed also the humiliation of the lover. Here was he, banishedfrom Marcella; here was Wharton, in possession of her mind andsympathies, busily forging a link--
"It shall be _broken!_" said Raeburn to himself with a sudden fierceconcentration of will. "So much I will claim--and enforce."
But not now, nothing now, but patience, delicacy, prudence. He gatheredhimself together with a long breath, and went his way.
* * * * *
For the rest, the clash of motives and affections he felt and foresaw inthis matter of the Disley murders, became day by day more harassing. Themoral debate was strenuous enough. The murders had roused all the humaneand ethical instincts, which were in fact the man, to such a point thatthey pursued him constantly, in the pauses of his crowded days, likeavenging Erinnyes. Hallin's remark that "game-preserving creates crime"left him no peace. Intellectually he argued it, and on the wholerejected it; morally, and in feeling, it scourged him. He had sufferedall his mature life under a too painful and scrupulous sense that he,more than other men, was called to be his brother's keeper. It wasnatural that, during these exhausting days, the fierce death onWestall's rugged face, the piteous agony in Dynes's young eyes andlimbs, should haunt him, should make his landlord's place andresponsibility often mere ashes and bitterness.
But, as Marcella had been obliged to perceive, he drew the sharpest linebetween the bearings of this ghastly business on his own private lifeand action, and its relation to public order. That the gamekeepersdestroyed were his servants, or practically his servants, made nodifference to him whatever in his estimate of the crime itself. If thecircumstances had been such that he could honestly have held Hurd not tobe a murderer, no employer's interest, no landlord's desire forvengeance, would have stood in his way. On the other hand, believing, ashe emphatically did, that Hurd's slaying of Westall had been of a kindmore deliberate and less capable of excuse than most murders, he wouldhave held it a piece of moral cowardice to allow his own qualms andcompunctions as to the rights and wrongs of game-preserving to interferewith a duty to justice and society.
Ay! and something infinitely dearer to him than his own qualms andcompunctions.
Hallin, who watched the whole debate in his friend day by day, wasconscious that he had never seen Aldous more himself, in spite oftrouble of mind; more "in character,"
so to speak, than at this moment.Spiritual dignity of mind and temper, blended with a painful personalhumility, and interfused with all--determining all--elements ofjudgment, subtleties, prejudices, modes of looking at things, for whichhe was hardly responsible, so deeply ingrained were they by inheritanceand custom. More than this: did not the ultimate explanation of thewhole attitude of the man lie in the slow but irresistible revolt of astrong individuality against the passion which had for a time suppressedit? The truth of certain moral relations may be for a time obscured anddistorted; none the less, _reality_ wins the day. So Hallin read it.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, during days when both for Aldous and Wharton the claims of abustling, shouting public, which must be canvassed, shaken hands with,and spoken to, and the constant alternations of business meetings,committee-rooms and the rest, made it impossible, after all, for eitherman to spend more than the odds and ends of thought upon anythingoutside the clatter of politics, Marcella had been living a life ofintense and monotonous feeling, shut up almost within the walls of atiny cottage, hanging over sick-beds, and thrilling to each pulse ofanguish as it beat in the miserable beings she tended.
The marriage of the season, with all its accompanying festivities andjubilations, had not been put off for seven weeks--till afterEaster--without arousing a storm of critical astonishment both invillage and county. And when the reason was known--that it was becauseMiss Boyce had taken the Disley murder so desperately to heart, thatuntil the whole affair was over, and the men either executed orreprieved, she could spare no thought to wedding clothes or cates--therewas curiously little sympathy with Marcella. Most of her own classthought it a piece of posing, if they did not say so as frankly as MissRaeburn--something done for self-advertisement and to advanceanti-social opinions; while the Mellor cottagers, with the instinctiveEnglish recoil from any touch of sentiment not, so to speak, in thebargain, gossiped and joked about it freely.
"She can't be very fond o' 'im, not of Muster Raeburn, she can't," saidold Patton, delivering himself as he sat leaning on his stick at hisopen door, while his wife and another woman or two chattered inside."_Not_ what I'd call lover-y. She don't want to run in harness, shedon't, no sooner than, she need. She's a peert filly is Miss Boyce."
"I've been a-waitin', an' a-waitin'," said his wife, with her gentlesigh, "to hear summat o' that new straw-plaitin' she talk about. Butnary a word. They do say as it's give up althegither."
"No, she's took up wi' nursin' Minta Hurd--wonderful took up," saidanother woman. "They do say as Ann Mullins can't abear her. When she'sthere nobody can open their mouth. When that kind o' thing happens inthe fambly it's bad enoof without havin' a lady trailin' about you allday long, so that you have to be mindin' yersel', an' thinkin' aboutgivin' her a cheer, an' the like."
One day in the dusk, more than a fortnight after the inquest, Marcella,coming from the Hurds' cottage, overtook Mrs. Jellison, who was goinghome after spending the afternoon with her daughter.
Hitherto Marcella had held aloof from Isabella Westall and herrelations, mainly, to do her justice, from fear lest she might somehowhurt or offend them. She had been to see Charlie Dynes's mother, but shehad only brought herself to send a message of sympathy through MaryHarden to the keeper's widow.
Mrs. Jellison looked at her askance with her old wild eyes as Marcellacame up with her.
"Oh, she's _puddlin'_ along," she said in answer to Marcella's inquiry,using a word very familiar in the village. "She'll not do herself amischief while there's Nurse Ellen an' me to watch her like a pair o'cats. She's dreadful upset, is Isabella--shouldn't ha' thought it ofher. That fust day"--a cloud darkened the curious, dreamy face--"no, I'mnot a-goin' to think about that fust day, I'm not, 'tain't a ha'porth o'good," she added resolutely; "but she was all right when they'd let herget 'im 'ome, and wash an' settle 'im, an' put 'im comfortable like inhis coffin. He wor a big man, miss, when he wor laid out! Searle, asmade the coffin, told her as ee 'adn't made one such an extry size sinceold Harry Flood, the blacksmith, fifteen year ago. Ee'd soon a done forJim Hurd if it 'ad been fists o' both sides. But guns is things as yercan't reckon on.".
"Why didn't he let Hurd alone," said Marcella, sadly, "and prosecute himnext day? It's attacking men when their blood is up that brings theseawful hings about."
"Wal, I don't see that," said Mrs. Jellison, pugnaciously; "he wor paidto do 't--an' he had the law on his side. 'Ow 's she?" she said,lowering her voice and jerking her thumb in the direction of the Hurds'cottage.
"She's very ill," replied Marcella, with a contraction of the brow."Dr. Clarke says she ought to stay in bed, but of course she won't."
"They're a-goin' to try 'im Thursday?" said Mrs. Jellison, inquiringly.
"Yes."
"An' Muster Wharton be a-goin' to defend 'im. Muster Wharton may becliver, ee may--they do say as ee can see the grass growin', ee's thatknowin'--but ee'll not get Jim Hurd off; there's nobody in the villageas b'lieves for a moment as 'ow he will. They'll best 'im. Lor' blessyer, they'll best 'im. I was a-sayin' it to Isabella thisafternoon--ee'll not save 'is neck, don't you be afeared."
Marcella drew herself up with a shiver of repulsion.
"Will it mend your daughter's grief to see another woman's heart broken?Don't you suppose it might bring her some comfort, Mrs. Jellison, if shewere to try and forgive that poor wretch? She might remember that herhusband gave him provocation, and that anyway, if his life is spared,his punishment and their misery will be heavy enough!"
"Oh, lor' no!" said Mrs. Jellison, composedly. "She don't want to beforgivin' of 'im. Mr. Harden ee come talkin' to 'er, but she isn't oneo' that sort, isn't Isabella. I'm sartin sure she'll be better in'erself when they've put 'im out o' the way. It makes her all ov a feverto think of Muster Wharton gettin' 'im off. _I_ don't bear Jim Hurd nopertickler malice. Isabella may talk herself black i' the face, but sheand Johnnie'll have to come 'ome and live along o' me, whatever she maysay. She can't stay in that cottage, cos they'll be wantin' it foranother keeper. Lord Maxwell ee's givin' her a fine pension, my word eeis! an' says ee'll look after Johnnie. And what with my bitairnins--we'll do, yer know, miss--we'll do!"
The old woman looked up with a nod, her green eyes sparkling with thequeer inhuman light that belonged to them.
Marcella could not bring herself to say good-night to her, and washurrying on without a word, when Mrs. Jellison stopped her.
"An' 'ow about that straw-plaitin', miss?" she said slyly.
"I have had to put it on one side for a bit," said Marcella, coldly,hating the woman's society. "I have had my hands full and LadyWinterbourne has been away, but we shall, of course, take it up againlater."
She walked away quickly, and Mrs. Jellison hobbled after her, grinningto herself every now and then as she caught the straight, tall figureagainst the red evening sky.
"I'll go in ter town termorrer," she thought, "an' have a crack wi'Jimmy Gedge; _ee_ needn't be afeard for 'is livin'. An' them great fulesas ha' bin runnin' in a string arter 'er, an' cacklin' about theireighteen-pence a score, as I've told 'em times, I'll eat my apron thefust week as iver they get it. I don't hold wi' ladies--no, nor passonsneither--not when it comes to meddlin' wi' your wittles, an' dictatin'to yer about forgivin' them as ha' got the better ov yer. That younglady there, what do she matter? That sort's allus gaddin' about? What'llshe keer about us when she's got 'er fine husband? Here o' Saturday,gone o' Monday--that's what she is. Now Jimmy Gedge, yer kin allus counton '_im._ Thirty-six year ee ha' set there in that 'ere shop, and Iguess ee'll set there till they call 'im ter kingdom come. Be's acheatin', sweatin', greedy old skinflint is Jimmy Gedge; but when yerwants 'im yer _kin_ find 'im."
* * * * *
Marcella hurried home, she was expecting a letter from Wharton, thethird within a week. She had not set eyes on him since they had met thatfirst morning in the drive, and it was plain to her that he was asunwilling as she was that there should
be any meeting between them.Since the moment of his taking up the case, in spite of the pressure ofinnumerable engagements, he had found time to send her, almost daily,sheets covered with his small even writing, in which every detail andprospect of the legal situation, so far as it concerned James Hurd, werenoted and criticised with a shrewdness and fulness which never wavered,and never lost for a moment the professional note.
"Dear Miss Boyce"--the letters began--leading up to a "Yoursfaithfully," which Marcella read as carefully as the rest. Often, as sheturned them over, she asked herself whether that scene in the libraryhad not been a mere delusion of the brain, whether the man whose wildwords and act had burnt themselves into her life could possibly bewriting her these letters, in this key, without a reference, without anallusion. Every day, as she opened them, she looked them through quietlywith a shaking pulse; every day she found herself proudly able to handthem on to her mother, with the satisfaction of one who has nothing toconceal, whatever the rest of the world may suspect. He was certainlydoing his best to replace their friendship on that level of highcomradeship in ideas and causes which, as she told herself, it had onceoccupied. His own wanton aggression and her weakness had toppled it downthence, and brought it to ruin. She could never speak to him, never knowhim again till it was re-established. Still his letters galled her. Heassumed, she supposed, that such a thing could happen, and nothing morebe said about it? How little he knew her, or what she had in her mind!
Now, as she walked along, wrapped in her plaid cape, her thought was onelong tumultuous succession of painful or passionate images, interruptednone the less at times by those curious self-observing pauses of whichshe had always been capable. She had been sitting for hours beside Mrs.Hurd, with little Willie upon her knees. The mother, always anaemic andconsumptive, was by now prostrate, the prey of a long-drawn agony,peopled by visions of Jim alone and in prison--Jim on the scaffold withthe white cap over his eyes--Jim in the prison coffin--which would rouseher shrieking from dreams which were the rending asunder of soul andbody. Minta Hurd's love for the unhappy being who had brought her tothis pass had been infinitely maternal. There had been a boundless pityin it, and the secret pride of a soul, which, humble and modest towardsall the rest of the world, yet knew itself to be the breath andsustenance, the indispensable aid of one other soul in the universe, andgloried accordingly. To be cut off now from all ministration, allcomforting--to have to lie there like a log, imagining the moment whenthe neighbours should come in and say, "It is all over--they have brokenhis neck--and buried him"--it was a doom beyond all even that her timidpessimist heart had ever dreamed. She had already seen him twice inprison, and she knew that she would see him again. She was to go onMonday, Miss Boyce said, before the trial began, and after--if theybrought him in guilty--they would let her say good-bye. She was alwaysthirsting to see him. But when she went, the prison surroundingsparalysed her. Both she and Hurd felt themselves caught in the wheels ofa great relentless machine, of which the workings filled them with avoiceless terror. He talked to her spasmodically of the most incongruousthings--breaking out sometimes with a glittering eye into a string ofinstances bearing on Westall's bullying and tyrannous ways. He told herto return the books Miss Boyce had lent him, but when asked if he wouldlike to see Marcella he shrank and said no. Mr. Wharton was "doin'capital" for him; but she wasn't to count on his getting off. And hedidn't know that he wanted to, neither. Once she took Willie to see him;the child nearly died of the journey; and the father, "though any onecan see, miss, he's just sick for 'im," would not hear of his comingagain. Sometimes he would hardly kiss her at parting; he sat on hischair, with his great head drooped forward over his red hands, lost in akind of animal lethargy. Westall's name always roused him. Hate stillsurvived. But it made _her_ life faint within her to talk of themurdered man--wherein she showed her lack of the usual peasant'srealism and curiosity in the presence of facts of blood and violence.When she was told it was time for her to go, and the heavy door waslocked behind her, the poor creature, terrified at the warder and thebare prison silences, would hurry away as though the heavy hand of thisawful Justice were laid upon her too, torn by the thought of him sheleft behind, and by the remembrance that he had only kissed her once,and yet impelled by mere physical instinct towards the relief of AnnMullins's rough face waiting for her--of the outer air and the freeheaven.
As for Willie, he was fast dwindling. Another week or two--the doctorsaid--no more. He lay on Marcella's knee on a pillow, wasted to aninfant's weight, panting and staring with those strange blue eyes, butalways patient, always struggling to say his painful "thank you" whenshe fed him with some of the fruit constantly sent her from MaxwellCourt. Everything that was said about his father he took in andunderstood, but he did not seem to fret. His mother was almost dividedfrom him by this passivity of the dying; nor could she give him or hisstate much attention. Her gentle, sensitive, but not profound nature wasstrained already beyond bearing by more gnawing griefs.
After her long sit in Mrs. Hurd's kitchen Marcella found the air of theFebruary evening tonic and delightful. Unconsciously impressions stoleupon her--the lengthening day, the celandines in the hedges, theswelling lilac buds in the cottage gardens. They spoke to her youth, andout of mere physical congruity it could not but respond. Still, her facekept the angered look with which she had parted from Mrs. Jellison.More than that--the last few weeks had visibly changed it, had gravedupon it the signs of "living." It was more beautiful than ever in itssignificant black and white, but it was older--a _woman_ spoke from it.Marcella had gone down into reality, and had found there the rebellionand the storm for which such souls as hers are made. Rebellion most ofall. She had been living with the poor, in their stifling rooms, amidtheir perpetual struggle for a little food and clothes and bodily ease;she had seen this struggle, so hard in itself, combined with agonies ofsoul and spirit, which made the physical destitution seem to thespectator something brutally gratuitous, a piece of careless andtyrannous cruelty on the part of Nature--or God? She would hardly letherself think of Aldous--though she _must_ think of him by-and-by! Heand his fared sumptuously every hour! As for her, it was as though inher woman's arms, on her woman's breast, she carried Lazarus all day,stooping to him with a hungering pity. And Aldous stood aloof. Aldouswould not help her--or not with any help worth having--in consoling thismisery--binding up these sores. Her heart cried shame on him. She had acrime against him to confess--but she felt herself his superior none theless. If he cast her off--why then surely they would be quits, quits forgood and all.
As she reached the front door of Mellor, she saw a little two-wheeledcart standing outside it, and William holding the pony.
Visitors were nowadays more common at Mellor than they had been, andher instinct was to escape. But as she was turning to a side doorWilliam touched his cap to her.
"Mr. Wharton's waiting to see you, miss."
She stopped sharply.
"Where is Mrs. Boyce, William?"
"In the drawing-room, miss."
She walked in calmly. Wharton was standing on the rug, talking; Mrs.Boyce was listening to what he had to say with the light repellent airMarcella knew so well.
When she came in Wharton stepped forward ceremoniously to shake hands,then began to speak at once, with the manner of one who is on a businesserrand and has no time to waste.
"I thought it best, Miss Boyce, as I had unexpectedly a couple of sparehours this evening, to come and let you know how things were going. Youunderstand that the case comes on at the assizes next Thursday?"
Marcella assented. She had seated herself on the old sofa beside thefire, her ungloved hands on her knee. Something in her aspect madeWharton's eyes waver an instant as he looked down upon her--but it wasthe only sign.
"I should like to warn you," he said gravely, "that I entertain no hopewhatever of getting James Hurd off. I shall do my best, but the verdictwill certainly be murder; and the judge, I think, is sure to take asevere view. We may get a recommendation to mercy,
though I believe itto be extremely unlikely. But if so, the influence of the judge,according to what I hear, will probably be against us. The prosecutionhave got together extremely strong evidence--as to Hurd's longconnection with the gang, in spite of the Raeburns' kindness--as to hisrepeated threats that he would 'do for' Westall if he and his friendswere interrupted--and so on. His own story is wholly uncorroborated; andDynes's deposition, so far as it goes, is all against it."
He went on to elaborate these points with great clearness of expositionand at some length; then he paused.
"This being so," he resumed, "the question is, what can be done? Theremust be a petition. Amongst my own party I shall be, of course, able todo something, but we must have men of all sides. Without some at leastof the leading Conservatives, we shall fare badly. In one word--do youimagine that you can induce Mr. Raeburn and Lord Maxwell to sign?"
Mrs. Boyce watched him keenly. Marcella sat in frozen paleness.
"I will try," she said at last, with deliberation.
"Then"--he took up his gloves--"there may be a chance for us. If youcannot succeed, no one else can. But if Lord Maxwell and Mr. Raeburn canbe secured, others will easily follow. Their names--especially under allthe circumstances--will carry a peculiar weight. I may say everything,in the first instance--the weight, the first effect of thepetition--depends on them. Well, then, I leave it in your hands. No timeshould be lost after the sentence. As to the grounds of our plea, Ishall, of course, lay them down in court to the best of my ability."
"I shall be there," she interrupted.
He started. So did Mrs. Boyce, but characteristically she made nocomment.
"Well, then," he resumed after a pause, "I need say no more for thepresent. How is the wife?"
She replied, and a few other formal sentences of inquiry or commentpassed between them.
"And your election?" said Mrs. Boyce, still studying him with hostileeyes, as he got up to take leave.
"To-morrow!" He threw up his hands with a little gesture of impatience."That at least will be one thread spun off and out of the way, whateverhappens. I must get back to Widrington as fast as my pony can carry me.Good-bye, Miss Boyce."
Marcella went slowly upstairs. The scene which had just passed wasunreal, impossible; yet every limb was quivering. Then the sound of thefront door shutting sent a shock through her whole nature. The firstsensation was one of horrible emptiness, forlornness. The next--her mindthrew itself with fresh vehemence upon the question, "Can I, by anymeans, get my way with Aldous?"