The seal and the scraps of paper were here produced by the policeman who had them in charge. The seal perfectly coincided with that which had closed the letter to Harry Beauchamp, and was, moreover, identified by both Alison and Colonel Keith. It was noticeable, too, that one of these fragments was the beginning of a note to Mr. Beauchamp, as "Dear H." and this, though not Edward's most usual style of addressing his friend, was repeated in the demand for the £300.
"Sir," said the accused, "of course I have no intention of intimating that a gentleman like the Honourable Colonel Keith has been in any collusion with this unhappy woman, but it must be obvious to you that his wish to exonerate his friend has induced him to give too easy credence to this person's malignant attempts to fasten upon one whom she might have had reason to regard as a benefactor the odium of the transactions that she acknowledges to have taken place between herself and this Maddox, thereto incited, no doubt, by some resemblance which must be strong, since it has likewise deceived Mr. Beauchamp."
Mr. Grey looked perplexed and vexed, and asked Mr. Beanchamp if he could suggest any other person able to identify Maddox. He frowned, said there must have been workmen at the factory, but knew not where they were, looked at Colin Keith, asked Alison if she or her sister had ever seen Maddox, then declared he could lay his hands on no one but Dr. Long at Belfast.
Mauleverer vehemently exclaimed against the injustice of detaining him till a witness could be summoned from that distance. Mr. Grey evidently had his doubts, and began to think of calling in some fresh opinion whether he had sufficient grounds for committal, and Alison's hopes were only unstained by Colin's undaunted looks, when there came a knock at the door, and, as much to the surprise of Alison as of every one else, there entered an elderly maid-servant, leading a little girl by the hand, and Colonel Keith going to meet the latter, said, "Do not be frightened, my dear, you have only to answer a few questions as plainly and clearly as you can."
Awed, silent, and dazzled by the sudden gas-light, she clung to his hand, but evidently distinguished no one else; and he placed her close to the magistrate saying, "This is Mr. Grey, Rose, tell him your name."
And Mr. Grey taking her hand and repeating the question, the clear little silvery voice answered,
"I am Rose Ermine Williams."
"And how old are you, my dear?"
"I was eight on the last of June."
"She knows the nature of an oath?" asked Mr. Grey of the Colonel.
"Certainly, yon can soon satisfy yourself of that."
"My dear," then said Mr. Grey, taking her by the hand again, and looking into the brown intelligent eyes, "I am sure you have been well taught. Can you tell me what is meant by taking an oath before a magistrate?"
"Yes," said Rose, colour flushing into her face, "it is calling upon Almighty God to hear one speak the truth." She spoke so low that she could hardly be heard, and she looked full of startled fear and distress, turning her face up to Colonel Keith with a terrified exclamation,
"Oh please, why am I here, what am I to say?"
He was sorry for her; but her manifest want of preparation was all in favour of the cause, and he soothed her by saying, "Only answer just what you are asked as clearly as you can, and Mr. Grey will soon let you go. He knows you would try any way to speak the truth, but as he is going to examine you as a magistrate, he must ask you to take the oath first."
Rose repeated the oath in her innocent tones, and perhaps their solemnity or the fatherly gentleness of Mr. Grey reassured her, for her voice trembled much less when she answered his next inquiry, who her parents were.
"My mother is dead," she said; "my father is Mr Williams, he is away at Ekaterinburg."
"Do you remember any time before he was at Ekaterinburg?"
"Oh yes; when we lived at Kensington, and he had the patent glass works."
"Now, turn round and say if there is any one here whom you know?"
Rose, who had hitherto stood facing Mr. Grey, with her back to the rest of the room, obeyed, and at once exclaimed, "Aunt Alison," then suddenly recoiled, and grasped at the Colonel.
"What is it, my dear?"
"It is--it is Mr. Maddox," and with another gasp of fright, "and Maria! Oh, let me go."
But Mr. Grey put his arm round her, and assured her that no one could harm her, Colonel Keith let his fingers be very hard pinched, and her aunt came nearer, all telling her that she had only to make her answers distinctly; and though still shrinking, she could reply to Mr. Grey's question whom she meant by Mr. Maddox.
"The agent for the glass--my father's agent."
"And who is Maria?"
"She was my nurse."
"When did you last see the person you call Mr. Maddox?"
"Last time, I was sure of it, was when I was walking on the esplanade at Avoncester with Colonel Keith," said Rose, very anxious to turn aside and render her words inaudible.
"I suppose you can hardly tell when that was?"
"Yes, it was the day before you went away to Lord Keith's wedding," said Rose, looking to the Colonel.
"Had you seen him before?"
"Twice when I was out by myself, but it frightened me so that I never looked again."
"Can you give me any guide to the time?"
She was clear that it had been after Colonel Keith's first stay at Avonmouth, but that was all, and being asked if she had ever mentioned these meetings, "Only when Colonel Keith saw how frightened I was, and asked me."
"Why were you frightened?" asked Mr. Grey, on a hint from the Colonel.
"Because I could not quite leave off believing the dreadful things Mr. Maddox and Maria said they would do to me if I told."
"Told what?"
"About Mr. Maddox coming and walking with Maria when she was out with me," gasped Rose, trying to avert her head, and not comforted by hearing Mr. Grey repeat her words to those tormentors of her infancy.
A little encouragement, however, brought out the story of the phosphoric letters, the lions, and the vision of Maddox growling in the dressing-room. The date of the apparition could hardly be hoped for, but fortunately Rose remembered that it was two days before her mamma's birthday, because she had felt it so bard to be eaten up before the fete, and this date tallied with that given by Maria of her admitting her treacherous admirer into the private rooms.
"The young lady may be precocious, no doubt, sir," here said the accused, "but I hardly see why she has been brought here. You can attach no weight to the confused recollections of so young a child, of matters that took place so long ago."
"The question will be what weight the jury will attach to them at the assizes," said Mr. Grey.
"You will permit me to make one inquiry of the young lady, sir. Who told her whom she might expect to see here?"
Mr. Grey repeated the query, and Rose answered, "Nobody; I knew my aunt and the Colonel and Lady Temple were gone in to Avoncester, and Aunt Ermine got a note from the Colonel to say that I was to come in to him with Tibbie in a fly."
"Did you know what you were wanted for?"
"No, I could not think. I only knew they came to get the woman punished for being so cruel to the poor little girls."
"Do you know who that person was?"
"Mrs. Rawlins," was the ready answer.
"I think," said Mr. Grey to the accused, "that you must perceive that, with such coincidence of testimony as I have here, I have no alternative but to commit you for the summer assizes."
Mauleverer murmured something about an action for false imprisonment, but he did not make it clear, and he was evidently greatly crestfallen. He had no doubt hoped to brazen out his assumed character sufficiently to disconcert Mr. Beauchamp's faith in his own memory, and though he had carried on the same game after being confronted with Maria, it was already becoming desperate. He had not reckoned upon her deserting his cause even for her own sake, and the last chance of employing her antecedents to discredit her testimony, had been overthrown by Rose's innocent witness to thei
r mutual relations, a remembrance which had been burnt in on her childish memory by the very means taken to secure her silence. When the depositions were read over, their remarkable and independent accordance was most striking; Mrs. Dench had already been led away by the minister, in time to catch her train, just when her sobs of indignation at the deception were growing too demonstrative, and the policeman resumed the charge of Maria Hatherton.
Little Rose looked up to her, saying, "Please, Aunt Ailie, may I speak to her?"
Alison had been sitting restless and perplexed between impulses of pity and repulsion, and doubts about the etiquette of the justice room; but her heart yearned over the girl she had cherished, and she signed permission to Rose, whose timidity had given way amid excitement and encouragement.
"Please, Maria," she said, "don't be angry with me for telling; I never did till Colonel Keith asked me, and I could not help it. Will you kiss me and forgive me as you used?"
The hard fierce eyes, that had not wept over the child's coffin, filled with tears.
"Oh, Miss Rose, Miss Rose, do not come near me. Oh, if I had minded you--and your aunts--" And the pent-up misery of the life that had fallen lower and lower since the first step in evil, found its course in a convulsive sob and shriek, so grievous that Alison was thankful for Colin's promptitude in laying hold of Rose, and leading her out of the room before him. Alison felt obliged to follow, yet could not bear to leave Maria to policemen and prison warders.
"Maria, poor Maria, I am so sorry for you, I will try to come and see you--"
But her hand was seized with an imperative, "Ailie, you must come, they are all waiting for you."
How little had she thought her arm would ever be drawn into that arm, so unheeded by both.
"So that is Edward's little girl! Why, she is the sweetest little clear-headed thing I have seen a long time. She was the saving of us."
"It was well thought of by Colin."
"Colin is a lawyer spoilt--that's a fact. A first-rate get-up of a case!"
"And you think it safe now?"
"Nothing safer, so Edward turns up. How he can keep away from such a child as that, I can't imagine. Where is she? Oh, here--" as they came into the porch in fuller light, where the Colonel and Rose waited for them. "Ha, my little Ailie, I must make better friends with you."
"My name is Rose, not Ailie," replied the little girl.
"Oh, aye! Well, it ought to have been, what d'ye call her--that was a Daniel come to judgment?"
"Portia," returned Rose; "but I don't think that is pretty at all."
"And where is Lady Temple?" anxiously asked Alison. "She must be grieved to be detained so long."
"Oh! Lady Temple is well provided for," said the Colonel, "all the magistrates and half the bar are at her feet. They say the grace and simplicity of her manner of giving her evidence were the greatest contrast to poor Rachel's."
"But where is she?" still persisted Alison.
"At the hotel; Maria's was the last case of the day, and she went away directly after it, with such a choice of escorts that I only just spoke to her."
And at the hotel they found the waggonette at the gateway, and Lady Temple in the parlour with Sir Edward Morden, who, late as it was, would not leave her till he had seen her with the rest of the party. She sprang up to meet them, and was much relieved to hear that Mauleverer was again secured. "Otherwise," she said, "it would have been all my fault for having acted without asking advice. I hope I shall never do so again."
She insisted that all should go home together in the waggonette, and Rose found herself upon Mr. Beauchamp's knee, serving as usual as a safety valve for the feelings of her aunt's admirers. There was no inconstancy on her part, she would much have preferred falling to the lot of her own Colonel, but the open carriage drive was rather a risk for him in the night air, and though he had undertaken it in the excitement, he soon found it requisite to muffle himself up, and speak as little as possible. Harry Beauchamp talked enough for both. He was in high spirits, partly, as Colin suspected, with the escape from a dull formal home, and partly with the undoing of a wrong that had rankled in his conscience more than he had allowed to himself. Lady Temple, her heart light at the convalescence of her sons, was pleased with everything, liked him extremely, and answered gaily; and Alison enjoyed the resumption of pleasant habits of days gone by. Yet, delightful as it all was, there was a sense of disenchantment: she was marvelling all the time how she could have suffered so much on Harry Beauchamp's account. The rejection of him had weighed like a stone upon her heart, but now it seemed like freedom to have escaped his companionship for a lifetime.
Presently a horse's feet were heard on the road before them; there was a meeting and a halt, and Alick Keith's voice called out--"How has it gone?"
"Why, were you not in court?"
"What! I go to hear my friends baited!"
"Where were you then?"
"At Avonmouth."
"Oh, then you have seen the boys," cried Lady Temple. "How is Conrade?"
"Quite himself. Up to a prodigious amount of indoor croquet. But how has it gone?"
"Such a shame!" returned Lady Temple. "They acquitted the dreadful man, and the poor woman, whom he drove to it, has a year's imprisonment and hard labour!"
"Acquitted! What, is he off?"
"Oh, no, no! he is safe, and waiting for the Assizes, all owing to the Colonel and little Rose."
"He is committed for the former offence," said Colonel Keith; "the important one."
"That's right! Good night! And how," he added, reining back his horse, "did your cousin get through it?"
"Oh, they were so hard on her!" cried Lady Temple. "I could hardly bring myself to speak to Sir Edward after it! It was as if he thought it all her fault!"
"Her evidence broke down completely," said Colonel Keith. "Sir Edward spared her as much as he could; but the absurdity of her whole conduct was palpable. I hope she has had a lesson."
Alick's impatient horse flew on with him, and Colin muttered to Alison under his mufflers,--"I never could make out whether that is the coolest or the most sensitive fellow living!"
CHAPTER XXII. THE AFTER CLAP
"I have read in the marvellous heart of man, That strange and mystic scroll, That an army of phantoms vast and wan Beleaguer the human soul. "Encamped beside life's rushing stream, In Fancy's misty light, Gigantic shapes and shadows gleam Portentous through the night." The Beleaguered City, LONGFELLOW.
A dinner party at the Deanery in the sessions week was an institution, but Rachel, lying on the sofa in a cool room, had thought herself exempt from it, and was conscious for the time of but one wish, namely, to be let alone, and to be able to shut her eyes, without finding the lids, as it were, lined with tiers of gazing faces, and curious looks turned on her, and her ears from the echo of the roar of fury that had dreadfully terrified both her and her mother, and she felt herself to have merited! The crush of public censure was not at the moment so overwhelming as the strange morbid effect of having been the focus of those many, many glances, and if she reflected at all, it was with a weary speculating wonder whether one pair of dark grey eyes had been among those levelled at her. She thought that if they had, she could not have missed either their ironical sting, or perchance some kindly gleam of sympathy, such as had sometimes surprised her from under the flaxen lashes.
There she had lain, unmolested and conscious of a certain relief in the exceeding calm; the grey pinnacle of the cathedral, and a few branches of an elm-tree alone meeting her eye through the open window, and the sole sound the cawing of the rooks, whose sailing flight amused and attracted her glance from time to time with dreamy interest. Grace had gone into court to hear Maria Hatherton's trial, and all was still.
The first break was when her mother and Miss Wellwood came in, after having wandered gently together round the warm, walled Deanery garden, comparing notes about their myrtles and geraniums. Then it was that amid all their tender inquiries after her headache,
and their administration of afternoon tea, it first broke upon Rachel that they expected her to go down to dinner.
"Pray excuse me," she said imploringly, looking at her mother for support, "indeed, I don't know that I could sit out a dinner! A number of people together make me so dizzy and confused."
"Poor child!" said Miss Wellwood, kindly, but looking to Mrs. Curtis in her turn. "Perhaps, as she has been so ill, the evening might be enough."
"Oh," exclaimed Rachel, "I hope to be in bed before you have finished dinner. Indeed I am not good company for any one."
"Don't say that, my dear," and Miss Wellwood looked puzzled.
"Indeed, my dear," said Mrs. Curtis, evidently distressed, "I think the exertion would be good for you, if you could only think so."
"Yes, indeed, said Miss Wellwood, catching at the notion; "it is your mind that needs the distraction, my dear."
"I am distracted enough already," poor Rachel said, putting her hand up. "Indeed, I do not want to be disobliging," she said, interpreting her mother's anxious gestures to mean that she was wanting in civility; "it is very kind in you, Miss Wellwood, but this has been a very trying day, and I am sure I can give no pleasure to anybody, so if I might only be let off."
"It is not so much--" began Miss Wellwood, getting into a puzzle, and starting afresh. "Indeed, my dear, my brother and I could not bear that you should do anything you did not like, only you see it would never do for you to seem to want to shut yourself up."
"I should think all the world must feel as if I ought to be shut up for life," said Rachel, dejectedly.
"Ah! but that is the very thing. If you do not show yourself it will make such a talk."
Rachel had nearly said, "Let them talk;" but though she felt tormented to death, habitual respect to these two gentle, nervous, elderly women made her try to be courteous, and she said, "Indeed, I cannot much care, provided I don't hear them."
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