"Who is found?" cried Marcella--"What is it?"
"Westall, miss--Lor" bless you--Shot him in the head they did--blowed his brains right out--and Charlie Dynes--oh! he"s knocked about shamful--the doctor don"t give no hopes of him. Oh deary--deary me! And we"re goin" for Muster Harden--ee must tell the widder--or Miss Mary--none on us can!"
"And who did it?" said Marcella, pale with horror, holding her.
"Why the poachers, miss. Them as they"ve bin waitin" for all along--and they do say as Jim Hurd"s in it. Oh Lord, oh Lord!"
Marcella stood petrified, and let them hurry on.
CHAPTER IX.
The lane was still again, save for the unwonted sounds coming from the groups which had gathered round the two women, and were now moving beside them along the village street a hundred yards ahead.
Marcella stood in a horror of memory--seeing Hurd"s figure cross the moonlit avenue from dark to dark. Where was he? Had he escaped? Suddenly she set off running, stung by the thought of what might have already happened under the eyes of that unhappy wife, those wretched children.
As she entered the village, a young fellow ran up to her in breathless excitement. "They"ve got "im, miss. He"d come straight home--"adn"t made no attempt to run. As soon as Jenkins" (Jenkins was the policeman) "heared of it, ee went straight across to "is house, an" caught "im. Ee wor goin" to make off--"is wife "ad been persuadin" ov "im all night.
But they"ve got him, miss, sure enough!"
The lad"s exultation was horrible. Marcella waved him aside and ran on.
A man on horseback appeared on the road in front of her leading from Widrington to the village. She recognised Aldous Raeburn, who had checked his horse in sudden amazement as he saw her talking to the boy.
"My darling! what are you here for? Oh! go home--go _home_!--out of this horrible business. They have sent for me as a magistrate. Dynes is alive--I _beg_ you!--go home!"
She shook her head, out of breath and speechless with running. At the same moment she and he, looking to the right, caught sight of the crowd standing in front of Hurd"s cottage.
A man ran out from it, seeing the horse and its rider.
"Muster Raeburn! Muster Raeburn! They"ve cotched "im; Jenkins has got "im."
"Ah!" said Aldous, drawing a long, stern breath; "he didn"t try to get off then? Marcella!--you are not going there--to that house!"
He spoke in a tone of the strongest remonstrance. Her soul rose in anger against it.
"I am going to _her_" she said panting;--"don"t wait."
And she left him and hurried on.
As soon as the crowd round the cottage saw her coming, they divided to let her pa.s.s.
"She"s quiet now, miss," said a woman to her significantly, nodding towards the hovel. "Just after Jenkins got in you could hear her crying out pitiful."
"That was when they wor a-handcuffin" him," said a man beside her.
Marcella shuddered.
"Will they let me in?" she asked.
"They won"t let none ov _us_ in," said the man. "There"s Hurd"s sister,"
and he pointed to a weeping woman supported by two others. "They"ve kep"
her out. But here"s the inspector, miss; you ask him."
The inspector, a shrewd officer of long experience, fetched in haste from a mile"s distance, galloped up, and gave his horse to a boy.
Marcella went up to him.
He looked at her with sharp interrogation. "You are Miss Boyce? Miss Boyce of Mellor?"
"Yes, I want to go to the wife; I will promise not to get in your way."
He nodded. The crowd let them pa.s.s. The inspector knocked at the door, which was cautiously unlocked by Jenkins, and the two went in together.
"She"s a queer one," said a thin, weasel-eyed man in the crowd to his neighbour. "To think o" her bein" in it--at this time o" day. You could see Muster Raeburn was a tellin" of her to go "ome. But she"s allus pampered them Hurds."
The speaker was Ned Patton, old Patton"s son, and Hurd"s companion on many a profitable night-walk. It was barely a week since he had been out with Hurd on another ferreting expedition, some of the proceeds of which were still hidden in Patton"s outhouse. But at the present moment he was one of the keenest of the crowd, watching eagerly for the moment when he should see his old comrade come out, trapped and checkmated, bound safely and surely to the gallows. The natural love of incident and change which keeps life healthy had been starved in him by his labourer"s condition. This sudden excitement had made a brute of him.
The man next him grimaced, and took his pipe out of his mouth a moment.
"_She_ won"t be able to do nothin" for "im! There isn"t a man nor boy in this "ere place as didn"t know as ee hated Westall like pison, and would be as like as not to do for "im some day. That"ll count agen "im now terrible strong! Ee wor allus one to blab, ee wor."
"Well, an" Westall said jus" as much!" struck in another voice; "theer wor sure to be a fight iv ever Westall got at "im--on the job. You see--they may bring it in manslarter after all."
""Ow does any one know ee wor there at all? who seed him?" inquired a white-haired elderly man, raising a loud quavering voice from the middle of the crowd.
"Charlie Dynes seed "im," cried several together.
"How do yer know ee seed "im?"
From the babel of voices which followed the white-haired man slowly gathered the beginnings of the matter. Charlie Dynes, Westall"s a.s.sistant, had been first discovered by a horsekeeper in Farmer Wellin"s employment as he was going to his work. The lad had been found under a hedge, bleeding and frightfully injured, but still alive. Close beside him was the dead body of Westall with shot-wounds in the head. On being taken to the farm and given brandy, Dynes was asked if he had recognised anybody. He had said there were five of them, "town chaps"; and then he had named Hurd quite plainly--whether anybody else, n.o.body knew. It was said he would die, and that Mr. Raeburn had gone to take his deposition.
"An" them town chaps got off, eh?" said the elderly man.
"Clean!" said Patton, refilling his pipe. "Trust them!"
Meanwhile, inside this poor cottage Marcella was putting out all the powers of the soul. As the door closed behind her and the inspector, she saw Hurd sitting handcuffed in the middle of the kitchen, watched by a man whom Jenkins, the local policeman, had got in to help him, till some more police should arrive. Jenkins was now upstairs searching the bedroom. The little bronchitic boy sat on the fender, in front of the untidy fireless grate, shivering, his emaciated face like a yellowish white mask, his eyes fixed immovably on his father. Every now and then he was shaken with coughing, but still he looked--with the dumb devoted attention of some watching animal.
Hurd, too, was sitting silent. His eyes, which seemed wider open and more brilliant than usual, wandered restlessly from thing to thing about the room; his great earth-stained hands in their fetters twitched every now and then on his knee. Haggard and dirty as he was, there was a certain aloofness, a dignity even, about the misshapen figure which struck Marcella strangely. Both criminal and victim may have it--this dignity. It means that a man feels himself set apart from his kind.
Hurd started at sight of Marcella. "I want to speak to her," he said hoa.r.s.ely, as the inspector approached him--"to that lady"--nodding towards her.
"Very well," said the inspector; "only it is my duty to warn you that anything you say now will be taken down and used as evidence at the inquest."
Marcella came near. As she stood in front of him, one trembling ungloved hand crossed over the other, the diamond in her engagement ring catching the light from the window sparkled brightly, diverting even for the moment the eyes of the little fellow against whom her skirts were brushing.
"Ee might ha" killed me just as well as I killed "im," said Hurd, bending over to her and speaking with difficulty from the dryness of his mouth. "I didn"t mean nothink o" what happened. He and Charlie came on us round Disley Wood. He didn"t take no notice o" them. It was they as beat Charlie. But he came straight on at me--all in a fury--a blackguardin" ov me, with his stick up. I thought he was for beatin" my brains out, an" I up with my gun and fired. He was so close--that was how he got it all in the head. But ee might "a" killed me just as well."