"I will do anything in the world to make these days less of a burden to you. You can hardly imagine that it is not grievous to me to think of any trouble of yours as being made worse by my being with you. But still I understand. One thing only I ask--that you should not imagine the difference between us greater than it is. The two letters you enclose have given me much to ponder. If only the course of the trial enables me with an honest heart to throw myself into your crusade of mercy, with what joy shall I come and ask you to lead me, and to forgive my own slower sense and pity!
"I should like you to know that Hallin is very much inclined to agree with you, to think that the whole affair was a "scrimmage," and that Hurd at least ought to be reprieved. He would have come to talk it over with you himself, but that Clarke forbids him anything that interests or excites him for the present. He has been very ill and suffering for the last fortnight, and, as you know, when these attacks come on we try to keep everything from him that could pain or agitate him. But I see that this 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 open before me and your picture close to my hand. So many things rise in my mind to say to you. There will come a time--there _must!_--when I may pour 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, little heart as I have for it, will fill up the week. The nomination-day is fixed for Thursday and the polling for Monday."
Marcella read the letter with a confusion of feeling so great as to be in itself monstrous and demoralising. Was she never to be simple, to see her way clearly again?
As for him, as he rode about the lanes and beechwoods in the days that followed, alone often with that nature for which all such temperaments as Aldous Raeburn"s have so secret and so observant an affection, he was perpetually occupied with this difficulty which had arisen between Marcella and himself, turning it over and over in the quiet of the morning, before the turmoil of the day began.
He had followed the whole case before the magistrates with the most scrupulous care. And since then, he had twice run across the Widrington solicitor for the defence, who was now instructing Wharton. This man, although a strong Radical, and employed generally by his own side, saw no objection at all to letting Lord Maxwell"s heir and representative understand how in his opinion the case was going. Aldous Raeburn was a person whom everybody respected; confidences were safe with him; and he was himself deeply interested in the affair. The Raeburns being the Raeburns, with all that that implied for smaller people in Brookshire, little Mr. Burridge was aware of no reason whatever why Westall"s employers should not know that, although Mr. Wharton was working up the defence with an energy and ability which set Burridge marvelling, it was still his, Burridge"s opinion, that everything that could be advanced would be wholly unavailing with the jury; that the evidence, as it came into final shape, looked worse for Hurd rather than better; and that the only hope for the man lay in the after-movement for reprieve which can always be got up in a game-preserving case.
"And is as a rule political and anti-landlord," thought Aldous, on one of these mornings, as he rode along the edge of the down. He foresaw exactly what would happen. As he envisaged the immediate future, he saw one figure as the centre of it--not Marcella, but Wharton! Wharton was defending, Wharton would organise the pet.i.tion, Wharton would apply for his own support and his grandfather"s, through Marcella. To Wharton would belong not only the popular _kudos_ of the matter, but much more, and above all, Marcella"s grat.i.tude.
Aldous pulled up his horse an instant, recognising that spot in the road, that downward stretching glade among the beeches, where he had asked Marcella to be his wife. The pale February sunlight was spreading from his left hand through the bare grey trunks, and over the distant shoulders of the woods, far into the white and purple of the chalk plain. Sounds of labour came from the distant fields; sounds of winter birds from the branches round him. The place, the time, raised in him all the intensest powers of consciousness. He saw himself as the man _standing midway_ in everything--speculation, politics, sympathies--as the perennially ineffective and, as it seemed to his morbid mood, the perennially defeated type, beside the Whartons of this world. Wharton!
He knew him--had read him long ago--read him afresh of late. Raeburn"s lip showed the contempt, the bitterness which the philosopher could not repress, showed also the humiliation of the lover. Here was he, banished from Marcella; here was Wharton, in possession of her mind and sympathies, busily forging a link--
"It shall be _broken!_" said Raeburn to himself with a sudden fierce concentration of will. "So much I will claim--and enforce."
But not now, nothing now, but patience, delicacy, prudence. He gathered himself together with a long breath, and went his way.
For the rest, the clash of motives and affections he felt and foresaw in this matter of the Disley murders, became day by day more hara.s.sing. The moral debate was strenuous enough. The murders had roused all the humane and ethical instincts, which were in fact the man, to such a point that they pursued him constantly, in the pauses of his crowded days, like avenging Erinnyes. Hallin"s remark that "game-preserving creates crime"
left him no peace. Intellectually he argued it, and on the whole rejected it; morally, and in feeling, it scourged him. He had suffered all 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 was natural that, during these exhausting days, the fierce death on Westall"s rugged face, the piteous agony in Dynes"s young eyes and limbs, should haunt him, should make his landlord"s place and responsibility often mere ashes and bitterness.
But, as Marcella had been obliged to perceive, he drew the sharpest line between the bearings of this ghastly business on his own private life and action, and its relation to public order. That the gamekeepers destroyed were his servants, or practically his servants, made no difference to him whatever in his estimate of the crime itself. If the circ.u.mstances had been such that he could honestly have held Hurd not to be a murderer, no employer"s interest, no landlord"s desire for vengeance, would have stood in his way. On the other hand, believing, as he emphatically did, that Hurd"s slaying of Westall had been of a kind more deliberate and less capable of excuse than most murders, he would have held it a piece of moral cowardice to allow his own qualms and compunctions as to the rights and wrongs of game-preserving to interfere with a duty to justice and society.
Ay! and something infinitely dearer to him than his own qualms and compunctions.
Hallin, who watched the whole debate in his friend day by day, was conscious that he had never seen Aldous more himself, in spite of trouble of mind; more "in character," so to speak, than at this moment.
Spiritual dignity of mind and temper, blended with a painful personal humility, and interfused with all--determining all--elements of judgment, subtleties, prejudices, modes of looking at things, for which he was hardly responsible, so deeply ingrained were they by inheritance and custom. More than this: did not the ultimate explanation of the whole att.i.tude of the man lie in the slow but irresistible revolt of a strong individuality against the pa.s.sion which had for a time suppressed it? The truth of certain moral relations may be for a time obscured and distorted; none the less, _reality_ wins the day. So Hallin read it.
Meanwhile, during days when both for Aldous and Wharton the claims of a bustling, shouting public, which must be canva.s.sed, shaken hands with, and spoken to, and the constant alternations of business meetings, committee-rooms and the rest, made it impossible, after all, for either man to spend more than the odds and ends of thought upon anything outside the clatter of politics, Marcella had been living a life of intense and monotonous feeling, shut up almost within the walls of a tiny cottage, hanging over sick-beds, and thrilling to each pulse of anguish as it beat in the miserable beings she tended.
The marriage of the season, with all its accompanying festivities and jubilations, had not been put off for seven weeks--till after Easter--without arousing a storm of critical astonishment both in village and county. And when the reason was known--that it was because Miss Boyce had taken the Disley murder so desperately to heart, that until the whole affair was over, and the men either executed or reprieved, she could spare no thought to wedding clothes or cates--there was curiously little sympathy with Marcella. Most of her own cla.s.s thought it a piece of posing, if they did not say so as frankly as Miss Raeburn--something done for self-advertis.e.m.e.nt and to advance anti-social opinions; while the Mellor cottagers, with the instinctive English recoil from any touch of sentiment not, so to speak, in the bargain, gossiped and joked about it freely.
"She can"t be very fond o" "im, not of Muster Raeburn, she can"t," said old Patton, delivering himself as he sat leaning on his stick at his open 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, she don"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 gentle sigh, "to hear summat o" that new straw-plaitin" she talk about. But nary a word. They do say as it"s give up althegither."
"No, she"s took up wi" nursin" Minta Hurd--wonderful took up," said another woman. "They do say as Ann Mullins can"t abear her. When she"s there n.o.body can open their mouth. When that kind o" thing happens in the fambly it"s bad enoof without havin" a lady trailin" about you all day long, so that you have to be mindin" yersel", an" thinkin" about givin" 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 going home after spending the afternoon with her daughter.
Hitherto Marcella had held aloof from Isabella Westall and her relations, mainly, to do her justice, from fear lest she might somehow hurt or offend them. She had been to see Charlie Dynes"s mother, but she had only brought herself to send a message of sympathy through Mary Harden to the keeper"s widow.
Mrs. Jellison looked at her askance with her old wild eyes as Marcella came 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 a mischief 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 of her. That fust day"--a cloud darkened the curious, dreamy face--"no, I"m not 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 her get "im "ome, and wash an" settle "im, an" put "im comfortable like in his coffin. He wor a big man, miss, when he wor laid out! Searle, as made the coffin, told her as ee "adn"t made one such an extry size since old Harry Flood, the blacksmith, fifteen year ago. Ee"d soon a done for Jim Hurd if it "ad been fists o" both sides. But guns is things as yer can"t reckon on.".
"Why didn"t he let Hurd alone," said Marcella, sadly, "and prosecute him next day? It"s attacking men when their blood is up that brings these awful hings about."
"Wal, I don"t see that," said Mrs. Jellison, pugnaciously; "he wor paid to 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 be cliver, ee may--they do say as ee can see the gra.s.s growin", ee"s that knowin"--but ee"ll not get Jim Hurd off; there"s n.o.body in the village as b"lieves for a moment as "ow he will. They"ll best "im. Lor" bless yer, they"ll best "im. I was a-sayin" it to Isabella this afternoon--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 she were to try and forgive that poor wretch? She might remember that her husband 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 be forgivin" of "im. Mr. Harden ee come talkin" to "er, but she isn"t one o" 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 fever to think of Muster Wharton gettin" "im off. _I_ don"t bear Jim Hurd no pertickler malice. Isabella may talk herself black i" the face, but she and Johnnie"ll have to come "ome and live along o" me, whatever she may say. She can"t stay in that cottage, cos they"ll be wantin" it for another keeper. Lord Maxwell ee"s givin" her a fine pension, my word ee is! an" says ee"ll look after Johnnie. And what with my bit airnins--we"ll do, yer know, miss--we"ll do!"
The old woman looked up with a nod, her green eyes sparkling with the queer inhuman light that belonged to them.
Marcella could not bring herself to say good-night to her, and was hurrying 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 Lady Winterbourne has been away, but we shall, of course, take it up again later."
She walked away quickly, and Mrs. Jellison hobbled after her, grinning to herself every now and then as she caught the straight, tall figure against 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 fules as ha" bin runnin" in a string arter "er, an" cacklin" about their eighteen-pence a score, as I"ve told "em times, I"ll eat my ap.r.o.n the fust week as iver they get it. I don"t hold wi" ladies--no, nor pa.s.sons neither--not when it comes to meddlin" wi" your wittles, an" dictatin"
to yer about forgivin" them as ha" got the better ov yer. That young lady there, what do she matter? That sort"s allus gaddin" about? What"ll she keer about us when she"s got "er fine husband? Here o" Sat.u.r.day, gone o" Monday--that"s what she is. Now Jimmy Gedge, yer kin allus count on "_im._ Thirty-six year ee ha" set there in that "ere shop, and I guess ee"ll set there till they call "im ter kingdom come. Be"s a cheatin", sweatin", greedy old skinflint is Jimmy Gedge; but when yer wants "im yer _kin_ find "im."
Marcella hurried home, she was expecting a letter from Wharton, the third within a week. She had not set eyes on him since they had met that first morning in the drive, and it was plain to her that he was as unwilling 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 of innumerable engagements, he had found time to send her, almost daily, sheets covered with his small even writing, in which every detail and prospect of the legal situation, so far as it concerned James Hurd, were noted 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 "Yours faithfully," which Marcella read as carefully as the rest. Often, as she turned them over, she asked herself whether that scene in the library had not been a mere delusion of the brain, whether the man whose wild words and act had burnt themselves into her life could possibly be writing her these letters, in this key, without a reference, without an allusion. Every day, as she opened them, she looked them through quietly with a shaking pulse; every day she found herself proudly able to hand them on to her mother, with the satisfaction of one who has nothing to conceal, whatever the rest of the world may suspect. He was certainly doing his best to replace their friendship on that level of high comradeship in ideas and causes which, as she told herself, it had once occupied. His own wanton aggression and her weakness had toppled it down thence, and brought it to ruin. She could never speak to him, never know him again till it was re-established. Still his letters galled her. He a.s.sumed, she supposed, that such a thing could happen, and nothing more be said about it? How little he knew her, or what she had in her mind!