"Sit down in that chair. Aldous, make her comfortable. Poor child, how tired she looks! I hear you wished to speak to me on this most unhappy, most miserable business."
Marcella, who was sitting erect on the edge of the chair into which Aldous had put her, lifted her eyes with a sudden confidence. She had always liked Lord Maxwell.
"Yes," she said, struggling to keep down eagerness and emotion. "Yes, I came to bring you this pet.i.tion, which is to be sent up to the Home Secretary on behalf of Jim Hurd, and--and--to _beg_ of you and Aldous to sign it, if in any way you can. I know it will be difficult, but I thought I might--I might be able to suggest something to you--to convince you--as I have known these people so well--and it is very important to have your signatures."
How crude it sounded--how mechanical! She felt that she had not yet command of herself. The strange place, the stately room, the consciousness of Aldous behind her--Aldous, who should have been on her side and was not--all combined to intimidate her.
Lord Maxwell"s concern was evident. In the first place, he was painfully, unexpectedly struck by the change in the speaker. Why, what had Aldous been about? So thin! so frail and willowy in her black dress--monstrous!
"My dear," he said, walking up to her and laying a fatherly hand on her shoulder, "my dear, I wish I could make you understand how gladly I would do this, or anything else, for you, if I honourably could. I would do it for your sake and for your grandfather"s sake. But--this is a matter of conscience, of public duty, both for Aldous and myself. You will not surely _wish_ even, that we should be governed in our relations to it by any private feeling or motive?"
"No, but I have had no opportunity of speaking to you about it--and I take such a different view from Aldous. He knows--everybody must know--that there is another side, another possible view from that which the judge took. You weren"t in court to-day, were you, at all?"
"No. But I read all the evidence before the magistrates with great care, and I have just talked over the crucial points with Aldous, who followed everything to-day, as you know, and seems to have taken special note of Mr. Wharton"s speeches."
"Aldous!"--her voice broke irrepressibly into another note--"I thought he would have let me speak to you first!--to-night!"
Lord Maxwell, looking quickly at his grandson, was very sorry for him.
Aldous bent over her chair.
"You remember," he said, "you sent down the pet.i.tion. I thought that meant that we were to read and discuss it. I am very sorry."
She tried to command herself, pressing her hand to her brow. But already she felt the irrevocable, and anger and despair were rising.
"The whole point lies in this," she said, looking up: "_Can_ we believe Hurd"s own story? There is no evidence to corroborate it. I grant that--the judge did not believe it--and there is the evidence of hatred.
But is it not possible and conceivable all the same? He says that he did not go out with any thought whatever of killing Westall, but that when Westall came upon him with his stick up, threatening and abusing him, as he had done often before, in a fit of wild rage he shot at him.
Surely, _surely_ that is conceivable? There _is_--there _must_ be a doubt; or, if it is murder, murder done in that way is quite, quite different from other kinds and degrees of murder."
Now she possessed herself. The gift of flowing persuasive speech which was naturally hers, which the agitations, the debates of these weeks had been maturing, came to her call. She leant forward and took up the pet.i.tion. One by one she went through its pleas, adding to them here and there from her own knowledge of Hurd and his peasant"s life--presenting it all clearly, with great intellectual force, but in an atmosphere of emotion, of high pity, charged throughout with the "tears of things." To her, gradually, unconsciously, the whole matter--so sordid, commonplace, brutal in Lord Maxwell"s eyes!--had become a tragic poem, a thing of fear and pity, to which her whole being vibrated. And as she conceived it, so she reproduced it. Wharton"s points were there indeed, but so were Hurd"s poverty, Hurd"s deformity, Hurd as the boyish victim of a tyrant"s insults, the miserable wife, the branded children--emphasised, all of them, by the occasional quiver, quickly steadied again, of the girl"s voice.
Lord Maxwell sat by his writing-table, his head resting on his hand, one knee crossed over the other. Aldous still hung over her chair. Neither interrupted her. Once the eyes of the two men met over her head--a distressed, significant look. Aldous heard all she said, but what absorbed him mainly was the wild desire to kiss the dark hair, so close below him, alternating with the miserable certainty that for him at that moment to touch, to soothe her, was to be repulsed.
When her voice broke--when she had said all she could think of--she remained looking imploringly at Lord Maxwell.
He was silent a little; then he stooped forward and took her hand.
"You have spoken," he said with great feeling, "most n.o.bly--most well--like a good woman, with a true compa.s.sionate heart. But all these things you have said are not new to me, my dear child. Aldous warned me of this pet.i.tion--he has pressed upon me, still more I am sure upon himself, all that he conceived to be your view of the case--the view of those who are now moving in the matter. But with the best will in the world I cannot, and I believe that he cannot--though he must speak for himself--I cannot take that view. In my belief Hurd"s act was murder, and deserves the penalty of murder. I have paid some attention to these things. I was a practising barrister in my youth, and later I was for two years Home Secretary. I will explain to you my grounds very shortly."
And, bending forward, he gave the reasons for his judgment of the case as carefully and as lucidly as though he were stating them to a fellow-expert, and not to an agitated girl of twenty-one. Both in words and manner there was an implied tribute, not only to Marcella, but perhaps to that altered position of the woman in our moving world which affects so many things and persons in unexpected ways.
Marcella listened, restlessly. She had drawn her hand away, and was twisting her handkerchief between her fingers. The flush that had sprung up while she was talking had died away. She grew whiter and whiter. When Lord Maxwell ceased, she said quickly, and as he thought unreasonably--
"So you will not sign?"
"No," he replied firmly, "I cannot sign. Holding the conviction about the matter I do, I should be giving my name to statements I do not believe; and in order to give myself the pleasure of pleasing you, and of indulging the pity that every man must feel for every murderer"s wife and children, I should be not only committing a public wrong, but I should be doing what I could to lessen the safety and security of one whole cla.s.s of my servants--men who give me honourable service--and two of whom have been so cruelly, so wantonly hurried before their Maker!"
His voice gave the first sign of his own deep and painful feeling on the matter. Marcella shivered.
"Then," she said slowly, "Hurd will be executed."
Lord Maxwell had a movement of impatience.
"Let me tell you," he said, "that that does not follow at all. There is _some_ importance in signatures--or rather in the local movement that the signatures imply. It enables a case to be reopened, which, in any event, this case is sure to be. But any Home Secretary who could decide a murder case on any other grounds whatever than those of law and his own conscience would not deserve his place a day--an hour! Believe me, you mistake the whole situation."
He spoke slowly, with the sharp emphasis natural to his age and authority. Marcella did not believe him. Every nerve was beginning to throb anew with that pa.s.sionate recoil against tyranny and prejudice, which was in itself an agony.
"And you say the same?" she said, turning to Aldous.
"I cannot sign that pet.i.tion," he said sadly. "Won"t you try and believe what it costs me to refuse?"
It was a heavy blow to her. Amply as she had been prepared for it, there had always been at the bottom of her mind a persuasion that in the end she would get her way. She had been used to feel barriers go down before that ultimate power of personality of which she was abundantly conscious. Yet it had not availed her here--not even with the man who loved her.
Lord Maxwell looked at the two--the man"s face of suffering, the girl"s struggling breath.
"There, there, Aldous!" he said, rising. "I will leave you a minute. Do make Marcella rest--get her, for all our sakes, to forget this a little.
Bring her in presently to us for some coffee. Above all, persuade her that we love her and admire her with all our hearts, but that in a matter of this kind she must leave us to do--as before G.o.d!--what we think right."
He stood before her an instant, gazing down upon her with dignity--nay, a certain severity. Then he turned away and left the room.
Marcella sprang up.
"Will you order the carriage?" she said in a strangled voice. "I will go upstairs."
"Marcella!" cried Aldous; "can you not be just to me, if it is impossible for you to be generous?"
"Just!" she repeated, with a tone and gesture of repulsion, pushing him back from her. "_You_ can talk of justice!"
He tried to speak, stammered, and failed. That strange paralysis of the will-forces which dogs the man of reflection at the moment when he must either take his world by storm or lose it was upon him now. He had never loved her more pa.s.sionately--but as he stood there looking at her, something broke within him, the first prescience of the inevitable dawned.
"_You_," she said again, walking stormily to and fro, and catching at her breath--"_You_, in this house, with this life--to talk of justice--the justice that comes of slaying a man like Hurd! And I must go back to that cottage, to that woman, and tell her there is _no_ hope--none! Because _you_ must follow your conscience--you who have everything! Oh! I would not have your conscience--I wish you a heart--rather! Don"t come to me, please! Oh! I must think how it can be.
Things cannot go on so. I should kill myself, and make you miserable.
But now I must go to _her_--to the _poor_--to those whom I _love_, whom I carry in my heart!"
She broke off sobbing. He saw her, in her wild excitement, look round the splendid room as though she would wither it to ruin with one fiery, accusing glance.
"You are very scornful of wealth," he said, catching her wrists, "but one thing you have no right to scorn!--the man who has given you his inmost heart--and now only asks you to believe in this, that he is not the cruel hypocrite you are determined to make him!"
His face quivered in every feature. She was checked a moment--checked by the moral compulsion of his tone and manner, as well as by his words.
But again she tore herself away.
"_Please_ go and order the carriage," she said. "I cannot bear any more.
I _must_ go home and rest. Some day I will ask your pardon--oh! for this--and--and--" she was almost choked again--"other things. But now I must go away. There is some one who will help me. I must not forget that!"
The reckless words, the inflection, turned Aldous to stone.
Unconsciously he drew himself proudly erect--their eyes met. Then he went up to the bell and rang it.
"The brougham at once, for Miss Boyce. Will you have a maid to go with you?" he asked, motioning the servant to stay till Miss Boyce had given her answer.
"No, thank you. I must go and put on my things. Will you explain to Miss Raeburn?"