East Lynne Part 114

"Come," said Lawyer Ball, in a coaxing tone, "let us be pleasant. Of course you were not with Richard Hare--West Lynne is always ill-natured- -you were on a visit to Captain Thorn, as--as any other young lady might be?"

Afy hung her head, cowed down to abject meekness.

"Answer the question," came forth the chairman's voice again. "Were you with Thorn?"

"Yes," though the answer was feeble enough.

Mr. Ball coughed an insinuating cough.

"Did you remain with him--say two or three years?"

"Not three."

"A little over two, perhaps?"

"There was no harm in it," shrieked Afy, with a catching sob of temper.

"If I chose to live in London, and he chose to make a morning call upon me, now and then, as an old friend, what's that to anybody? Where was the harm, I ask?"

"Certainly--where was the harm? I am not insinuating any," returned Lawyer Ball, with a wink of the eye furthest from the witness and the bench. "And, during the time that--that he was making these little morning calls upon you, did you know him to be Levison?"

"Yes. I knew him to be Captain Levison then."

"Did he ever tell you why he had a.s.sumed the name of Thorn?"

"Only for a whim, he said. The day he spoke to me in the pastrycook's shop at Swainson, something came over him, in the spur of the moment, not to give his right name, so he gave the first that came into his head. He never thought to retain it, or that other people would hear of him by it."

"I dare say not," laconically spoke Lawyer Ball. "Well, Miss Afy, I believe that is all for the present. I want Ebenezer James in again," he whispered to an officer of the justice-room, as the witness retired.

Ebenezer James reappeared and took Afy's place.

"You informed their worships, just now, that you had met Thorn in London, some eighteen months subsequent to the murder," began Lawyer Ball, launching another of his shafts. "This must have been during the period of Afy Hallijohn's sojourn with him. Did you also see her?"

Mr. Ebenezer opened his eyes. He knew nothing of the evidence just given by Afy, and wondered how on earth it had come out--that she had been with Thorn at all. He had never betrayed it.

"Afy?" stammered he.

"Yes, Afy," sharply returned the lawyer. "Their worships know that when she took that trip of hers from West Lynne it was to join Thorn not Richard Hare--though the latter has borne the credit of it. I ask you, did you see her? for she was then still connected with him."

"Well--yes, I did," replied Mr. Ebenezer, his own scruples removed, but wondering still how it had been discovered, unless Afy had--as he had prophesied she would--let out in her "tantrums." "In fact, it was Afy whom I first saw."

"State the circ.u.mstances."

"I was up Paddington way one afternoon, and saw a lady going into a house. It was Afy Hallijohn. She lived there, I found--had the drawing- room apartments. She invited me to stay to tea with her, and I did."

"Did you see Captain Levison there?"

"I saw Thorn--as I thought him to be. Afy told me I must be away by eight o'clock, for she was expecting a friend who sometimes came to sit with her for an hour's chat. But, in talking over old times--not that I could tell her much about West Lynne, for I had left it almost as long as she had--the time slipped on past the hour. When Afy found that out she hurried me off, and I had barely got outside the gate when a cab drove up, and Thorn alighted from it, and let himself in with a latch- key. That is all I know."

"When you knew that the scandal of Afy's absence rested on Richard Hare, why could you not have said this, and cleared him, on your return to West Lynne?"

"It was no affair of mine, that I should make it public. Afy asked me not to say I had seen her, and I promised her I would not. As to Richard Hare, a little extra scandal on his back was nothing, while there remained on it the worse scandal of murder."

"Stop a bit," interposed Mr. Rubiny, as the witness was about to retire.

"You speak of the time being eight o'clock in the evening, sir. Was it dark?"

"Yes."

"Then how can you be certain it was Thorn who got out of the cab and entered?"

"I am quite certain. There was a gas-lamp right at the spot, and I saw him as well as I should have seen him in daylight. I knew his voice, too; could have sworn to it anywhere; and I would almost have sworn to him by his splendid diamond ring. It flashed in the lamplight."

"His voice! Did he speak to you?"

"No. But he spoke to the cabman. There was a half dispute between them.

The man said Thorn had not paid him enough, that he had not allowed for having been kept waiting twenty minutes on the road. Thorn swore at him a bit, and then flung him an extra shilling."

The next witness was a man who had been groom to the late Sir Peter Levison. He testified that the prisoner, Francis Levison had been on a visit to his master late in the summer and part of the autumn, the year that Hallijohn was killed. That he frequently rode out in the direction of West Lynne, especially toward evening; would be away three or four hours, and come home with the horse in a foam. Also that he picked up two letters at different times, which Mr. Levison had carelessly let fall from his pocket, and returned them to him. Both the notes were addressed "Captain Thorn." But they had not been through the post, for there was no further superscription on them; and the writing looked like a lady's. He remembered quite well hearing of the murder of Hallijohn, the witness added, in answer to a question; it made a great stir through out the country. It was just at that same time that Mr. Levison concluded his visit, and returned to London.

"A wonderful memory!" Mr. Rubiny sarcastically remarked.

The witness, a quiet, respectable man, replied that he had a good memory; but that circ.u.mstances had impressed upon it particularly the fact that Mr. Levison's departure followed close upon the murder of Hallijohn.

"One day, when Sir Peter was round at the stables, gentlemen, he was urging his nephew to prolong his visit, and asked what sudden freak was taking him off. Mr. Levison replied that unexpected business called him to London. While they were talking, the coachman came up, all in a heat, telling that Hallijohn, of West Lynne, had been murdered by young Mr.

Hare. I remember Sir Peter said he could not believe it; and that it must have been an accident, not murder."

"Is that all?"

"There was more said. Mr. Levison, in a shameful sort of manner, asked his uncle, would he let him have five or ten pounds? Sir Peter seemed angry, and asked, what had he done with the fifty-pound note he had made him a present of only the previous morning? Mr. Levison replied that he had sent that away to a brother officer, to whom he was in debt. Sir Peter refused to believe it, and said he had more likely squandered it upon some disgraceful folly. Mr. Levison denied that he had; but he looked confused, indeed, his manner altogether was confused that morning."

"Did he get the five or ten pounds?"

"I don't know, gentlemen. I dare say he did, for my master was as persuadable as a woman, though he'd fly out a bit sometimes at first.

Mr. Levison departed for London that same night."

The last witness called was Mr. Dill. On the previous Tuesday evening, he had been returning home from spending an hour at Mr. Beauchamp's, when, in a field opposite to Mr. Justice Hare's, he suddenly heard a commotion. It arose from the meeting of Sir Francis Levison and Otway Bethel. The former appeared to have been enjoying a solitary moonlight ramble, and the latter to have encountered him unexpectedly. Words ensued. Bethel accused Sir Francis of "shirking" him. Sir Francis answered angrily that he knew nothing of him, and nothing he wanted to know.

"'You were glad enough to know something of me the night of Hallijohn's murder,' retorted Bethel to this. 'Do you remember that I could hang you. One little word from me, and you'd stand in d.i.c.k Hare's place.'

"'You fool!' pa.s.sionately cried Sir Francis. 'You couldn't hang me without putting your own head in a noose. Did you not have your hush money? Are you wanting to do me out of more?'

"'A cursed paltry note of fifty pounds!' foamed Otway Bethel, 'which, many a time since, I have wished my fingers were blown off before they touched. I never should have touched it, but that I was altogether overwhelmed with the moment's confusion. I have not been able to look Mrs. Hare in the face since, knowing that I held the secret that would save her son from the hangman.'

"'And put yourself in his place,' sneered Sir Francis.

"'No. Put you.'

"'That's as it might be. But, if I went to the hangman, you would go with me. There would be no excuse or escape for you. You know it.'"

The warfare continued longer, but this was the cream of it. Mr. Dill heard the whole, and repeated it now to the magistrate. Mr. Rubiny protested that it was "inadmissible;" "hearsay evidence;" "contrary to law;" but the bench oracularly put Mr. Rubiny down, and told him they did not want any stranger to come there and teach them their business.